Although there are varieties of philosophical positivism stretching back to the formulation by Comte in the 1830's, in archaeology positivism is a general position which gives primacy to
epistemology, and one which is essentially
empiricist. From this underlying affirmation of knowledge-through-observation, the positivists (particularly Carnap, Neurath, Schlick of the Vienna School/neo-Positivists, but also with the contemporary philosophy of Van Fraassen) held
six key postulations: 1)
verification (or falsification with Popper) is the method of assessing truth/falsehood claims; 2)
observation provides the only manner of founding knowledge; 3) a de-emphasis or restriction upon explanation, which organizes observed-data, but cannot provide deeper understanding beyond cause-and-effect (Hume), related to 4)
anti-cause, or not attributing more to cause-and-effect in Nature other than observed constancy of phenomena (Hume); 5) a disavowal of theoretical entities, or a position of
anti-realism with respect to theory (not an empirical anti-realism); and 6) a culminating
anti-metaphysics.
The natural sciences are usually taken as the paradigm of an empiricist epistemology, and hence positivist archaeologists will invoke not necessarily laws but a generalising explanatory framework wherein a particular event, for example, is explained by reference to or subsumption beneath a general relationship. There is an emphasis on empirical data as the primary means of testing such explanations because of their objectivity. By asserting the identity of natural and social phenomena, the application of the methods - and assumptions - of natural science are imported into social science, with quite serious consequences for how social phenomena are subsequently perceived. Quantitative and mathematical techniques are liberally applied in processual archaeology sometimes, it is criticised, without adequate reflection. Positivist archaeology differs quite radically from a hermeneutic tradition which distinguishes explanation from understanding achieved through interpretation (cf hermeneutics).
References
Ayer, A.J. (ed) 1959:
Logical Positivism, New York.
Moore, G.E. 1903:
Principia Ethica, Cambridge.
Whitehead, A.N. and B. Russell 1910-3:
Principia Mathematica, Cambridge.
Wittgenstein, L. 1921:
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Cambridge.
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