Secular, Social, Scientific
Though Émile Durkheim, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel are generally regarded as the “founders” of sociology as a discipline, sociological theory was actually rooted in nineteenth-century culture as intellectuals and scientists attempted to make sense... Read More | Share it now!
Olaf Simons: You have made a beautiful film on Positivism in Brazil. "The Last Religion" (Documentary about Positivism in Brazil, 2015) from Hugo Pinto on Vimeo. What gave you the idea to work on such a – shall I say strange –... Read More | Share it now!
This was a recent Quora question and it keeps puzzling me. Is reality subjective or objective? If it is subjective is every interpretation of it correct? It is not that difficult to reject this question as what it is: an assumption supported by an... Read More | Share it now!
Stephen LeDrew’s Book on the Evolution of Atheism has apparently asked the right questions – if I read Patrik Lindenfors’s considerations at Humanistbloggen correctly. (The Google Translate English version is actually quite readable). What... Read More | Share it now!
Two documents with the power to anticipate the age of modern crowdfunding. The first is provided by Bernard Quaritch Ltd who are presently offering the original for the price of £200: A printed receipt with manuscript insertions dated Paris, 9... Read More | Share it now!
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Wittgenstein’s Lectures on the Foundations of Mathematics Cambridge, 1939, ed. by Cora Diamond (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 300 pages. Publisher’s link. This is the first in a series of posts, outlining... Read More | Share it now!
Must Christianity be Empirically Falsifiable? It was the subtitle that caught my attention in Dave Armstrong’s recent Patheos post: — …in Order to be Rationally Held? Positivist Myths and Fallacies Debunked by Philosophers and... Read More | Share it now!
Dear Ryan, this posting has been on my list far too long. I loved this your diagram of the realism/anti-realism antagonism. The very topic is cool. Most people will shake their heads about the options you are presenting. “Where exactly is the... Read More | Share it now!
I know that this is mined territory but I assume that we are all wondrously competent to think in more than one mode and that all the time. The believer can tell me all kinds of things about her trust in God. If I ask her to let her two year old kid... Read More | Share it now!
This is the complete passage on “atheism, materialism, fatalism, and optimism” of Auguste Comte’s A General View of Positivism, first published in French in 1848, the English text taken from Frederick Harrison’s edition... Read More | Share it now!
This is not really a question Let me first examine the question in its functionality. It is essentially a move “theists” (today a term atheist are keeping alive) might make to vex atheists over their particular problems with agnosticism. It is... Read More | Share it now!
Available also in Portuguese Auguste Comte’s Religion of Humanity was far more than the all-embracing philosophical proposal he outlined in the sixth chapter of his General View on Positivism in 1848 – the treatise he would publish again in his... Read More | Share it now!
Why is it that Wikipedia is a man’s world? Why is our community 90% male, mostly white, either young or retired, mostly nerds, people whom you will not meet in clubs, a high rate of temporary singles… and mostly amateurs in the fields of their... Read More | Share it now!
Available also in English Sobre as orações de Comte – algumas observações introdutórias O quadro esboçado por Henri Gouhier – exposto com fortes doses de ironia, a título de “crítica” – apresenta um painel intenso e bonito de alguns... Read More | Share it now!
Excerpt from the “antimetaphysical” first chapter of: Ernst Mach, The analysis of sensations, and the relation of the physical to the psychical, translated from the first German edition by Cora May Williams, revised and supplemented from... Read More | Share it now!
This video has gone viral. It is wonderfully concise and designed to be both haunting and self-reflexive. We are all subjected to these viral pieces of information. We see them, they trigger an emotion, and all we have to do is press share ore like... Read More | Share it now!
I think that is a very useful distinction you have made between “as soon as”, “always when” and “because”. Let me try to explain “because” as I understand it. Take a moment in time t1. (Actually there are no such things as moments... Read More | Share it now!
The following passages are an excerpt from John Stuart Mill‘s Auguste Comte and Positivism, a book lenght appraisal of Comte’s philosophy including his theory of knowledge, his Religion of Humanity and his ideas of future societies. The... Read More | Share it now!
A Young Positivist Parson. “What’s a Miracle?” Boy. “Dunno.” Parson. “Well, if the Sun were to Shine in the Middle of the Night, what should you Say it was?” Boy. “The Moon.” Parson. “But if you were Told it was the Sun, what... Read More | Share it now!
In philosophy, death occurs when there is nothing more to talk about. In the case of logical positivism, modern physics is pretty much all logical positivism. It is the raw extraction of data from experiments, followed by mathematical formulation,... Read More | Share it now!