Positivism vs. Phenomenology: What's the Difference?

A doctrine contending that sense perceptions are the only admissible basis of human knowledge and precise thought.

A philosophy or method of inquiry concerned with the perception and experience of objects and events as the basis for the investigation of reality.

The application of this doctrine in logic, epistemology, and ethics.

A philosophical movement based on this, originated by Edmund Husserl around 1905.

The system of Auguste Comte designed to supersede theology and metaphysics and depending on a hierarchy of the sciences, beginning with mathematics and culminating in sociology.

(philosophy) The study of structures of consciousness as experienced from the first-person point of view.

Any of several doctrines or viewpoints, often similar to Comte's, that stress attention to actual practice over consideration of what is ideal

(philosophy) A movement based on this, originated about 1905 by Edmund Husserl.

The state or quality of being positive.

(medicine, philosophy of medical sciences) An approach to clinical practice which places undue reliance upon subjective criteria such as signs and symptoms, while ignoring objective etiologies in the formulation of diagnoses and in the compilation of a formal nosologies.

(philosophy) A doctrine that states that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict scientific method, refusing every form of metaphysics.

(physics) The use of theoretical models to make predictions that can be tested through experiments.

(legal) A school of thought in jurisprudence in which the law is seen as separated from moral values; i.e. the law is posited by lawmakers (humans).

A description, history, or explanation of phenomena.

A system of philosophy originated by M. Auguste Comte, which deals only with positives. It excludes from philosophy everything but the natural phenomena or properties of knowable things, together with their invariable relations of coexistence and succession, as occurring in time and space. Such relations are denominated laws, which are to be discovered by observation, experiment, and comparison. This philosophy holds all inquiry into causes, both efficient and final, to be useless and unprofitable.

A philosophical doctrine proposed by Edmund Husserl based on the study of human experience in which considerations of objective reality are not taken into account

The form of empiricism that bases all knowledge on perceptual experience (not on intuition or revelation)

A quality or state characterized by certainty or acceptance or affirmation