Logical Empiricism/Logical Positivism

• In Event: 14.017 - Old and New Empiricisms for Empirical Educational Research

Abstract

Objectives or purposes: This paper describes the history, politics, and assumptions of logical empiricism, sometimes called logical positivism, which grounds much empirical educational research but which is often transparent. That is, researchers don’t identify their work as logical empiricist—it appears “normal.” In addition, it is unlikely that logical empiricism, or other empiricisms, for that matter, are taught in educational research methodology curriculum. The author argues that the empiricisms of different methodologies should be taught before teaching their specific processes, methods, and applications. In this way, educational researchers can identity and understand the epistemological and ontological commitments of various methodologies and use them in a valid and rigorous manner. Logical empiricism, especially, seems taken-for-granted and normalized.

Perspectives or theoretical frameworks: Logical empiricism

Mode of inquiry: Methodological/theoretical

Data sources, evidence, warrants: Evidence gathered from years of studying, teaching, and reviewing conventional social science research methodology, especially from educational researchers trying to do “new empirical” inquiry in the 21st century.

Results, significance: The Vienna Circle, a group of prestigious European scholars, organized logical empiricism/logical positivism at the beginning of the 20th century to combat metaphysics, and, though immediately critiqued, it became pervasive in U.S. social science. Interpretive, critical, and postmodern scholars produced another wave of critique later in the century. Nonetheless, logical empiricism has had great staying power, especially in light of the No Child Left Behind Act of 2000 which privileged logical empiricist “scientifically based research” in education. This paper reviews the assumptions that organize logical empiricism to remind us of what it looks like, what it does, and what it cannot do in the production of knowledge. Some characteristics of logical empiricism that have become “normal” are as follows: (1) the idea that the methods of the natural sciences can be used to the same effect in the human sciences; (2) incrementalism (the idea that knowledge accumulates); (3) the belief that language can be “clear”; (4) the use of prescribed, exact, formal methods, preferably mathematical; (5) and the idea that only that which can be seen and measured is valuable. As mentioned earlier, however, interpretive, critical, and postmodern social science approaches refuse those assumptions and offer different empiricisms. Being able to recognize logical empiricism as only one available empiricism is critical for opening educational research to inquiry we have not yet been able to imagine.

Author

• Elizabeth A. St. Pierre, University of Georgia