positivism (was Re: "rise of china" and wst)

On Fri, 2 Mar 2001 wwagar@binghamton.edu wrote:

> 
> Boris and All--
> 
>       Ha, ha!  That's the best (negative) criticism of A SHORT HISTORY
> OF THE FUTURE I have yet seen.  I intend to cite it routinely in future
> discussions of that venerable book.  My only defense is that Wallerstein
> himself saw it very differently, but so what?  The last 100 years
> transposed onto the next 200!  Bravo!  Maybe that's why historians should
> keep their idiographic hands off the future!

Glad to be of service, whether entertainment or (God forbid) a source of
insight.

>       Of course WST is contested terrain.  Along with everything else.
> Even I am corrupted by postmodernism, or why would I deny that the future
> can be predicted?  In my courses, I even offer the argument that the
> future cannot be predicted for the same reason that the past cannot be
> predicted.  But that's not quite fair, because I do, at the back of my
> positivist mind, believe that a God could do both.  Also please recall
> that positivism in its original sense incorporated a flat denial of
> metaphysical inquiry.  Down with omniscience, teleology, truth claims.
> Not suitable hunting grounds for mere human beings, who have only their
> eyes and ears and noses and the tools of logical discourse.

Isn't the rejection of truth claims and the supposition that knowledge can
only originate on the basis of sensory perception also a truth claim?
Here, in a nutshell, is the positivist credo, apparently still unchanged
from the day it was first stated:

"In whatever way we study the general development of the human intellect,
whether according to the rational method or empirically, we discover,
despite all seeming irregularities, a fundamental Law to which its
progress is necessarily and invariably subjected.  The content of this Law
is that the intellectual system of man, considered in all its aspects, had
to assume succesively three distinct characters: the theological, the
metaphysical and, finally, the positive or scientific character.  Thus man
began by conceiving phenomena of every kind as due to the direct and
continuous influence of supernatural agents; he next regarded them as
products of various abstract forces, inherent in the bodies, but distinct
and heterogeneous; and, finally, he restricts himself to viewing them as
subject to a certain number of invariable natural laws which are nothing
but the expression in general terms of relations observed in their
development."

Comte said this back in the 1820's, and I guess it's only natural (or
should I say in accordance with the Law) that  an author of _Building the
City of Man_ still seeks a divine affirmation for his belief in the
Law of 3 Stages as the foundation for "truth claims" today.  

But I guess this belief conflicts with the corrupt postmodernist claim
that the future cannot be predicted, after all, so bless you for that,
Warren.

-- 
Boris Stremlin
bc70219@binghamton.edu