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From Positivism to Post-Positivism: Progress or Digression?

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 teoria polityki 3 | 2019 s. 175–188
doi: 10.4467/25440845TP.19.009.10292
www.ejournals.eu/teoria_polityki

Martyn Hammersley
The Open University

From Positivism to Post-Positivism:

Progress or Digression?

Abstract: During the first half of the 20th century, approaches developed across the social
sciences that were strongly influenced by positivist ideas. Indeed, it could be said that the
very notion of a social science was positivist in origin. Moreover, even after positivism’s
influence had waned in many fields, in the second half of that century, it continued to
exist at the very least as a ghostly presence, serving as a recurrent target for attack in
methodological disputes. I begin by briefly outlining the history of positivist ideas and
the various forms they took, along with their implications for the practice of social sci-
ence. Then I consider two distinct varieties of ‘post-positivism’; one revisionist, the other
much more radical. I conclude by considering in what respects these moves beyond po-
sitivism represent progress, and whether anything can still be learned from it today.
Keywords: positivism and social science, post-positivism, Comte, political arithmetic, con-
structionism

As used by social scientists today, the word ‘positivism’ has little clear cogni-
tive meaning.1 To a large extent, its sense has become primarily emotive, sim-
ply conveying a strongly negative evaluation. Thus, few people would now self-
identify as positivists. However, this was not always the case, and there is much
to be learned by looking back at what the word originally meant, and at some
of the directions in which efforts to go beyond positivism, in other words to
be post-positivist, have taken.2 Of course, this issue cannot be examined in any
depth within the space of a short article, but I hope that these brief reflections
may be useful in countering the distorted views of positivism which, it seems
to me, now prevail.

1
This has been true for some time, see Cohen, 1980. As we shall see, there is also a tendency to
conflate its meaning with that of another polysemantic word, ‘realism’.
2
I am using the term ‘post-positivism’ here to refer to what came after, and (to one degree or
another) in reaction against ‘positivism’ in the field of social science methodology. As I indi-
cate later, this term is often used in a narrower sense to refer to efforts to reform positivism.
176 Martyn Hammersley

A brief history of positivism

The term ‘positivism’ appears to have been first used in the 1820s, in French,
most influentially by Auguste Comte as a label for his ‘positive philosophy’
(Pickering, 1993a: pp. 580–581); though many of the ideas to which it referred
have a longer history.3 Comte’s philosophy was intended to exemplify and pro-
mote the scientific mode of thought which he believed was becoming dominant,
superseding the theological and metaphysical forms that had prevailed in ear-
lier periods of European history. Comte’s ideas had great influence on social sci-
ence in the nineteenth and into the twentieth century, directly as well as indirect-
ly through the work of others, such as Mill and Durkheim.
Another source of what later came to be referred to as positivism in social science
was the development of ‘political arithmetic’. One version of this was the production
and analysis of statistical information about national societies, including about spe-
cific social problems such as notably poverty (see Halfpenny, 1982, ch. 2; Abrams,
1972; Oberschall, 1972). Another, concerned for example with political representa-
tion, was developed by Condorcet and others – Madame de Staël believed that this
would “yield results so positive that one might succeed in reducing all the problems
of the moral sciences to mathematical series, to deductions and proofs” (quoted in
Manuel, 1956, p. 60; see Baker, 1975). In the 19th century the production of social sta-
tistics expanded considerably, aimed at documenting social facts of use in nation-
al policymaking and in social reform. Furthermore, towards the end of that centu-
ry, new statistical techniques were developed for analysing such data (Porter, 1986).
Both these influences on what later came to be called positivism in social sci-
ence drew on the spirit of 18th-century Enlightenment ideas. At the same time,
Comte deviated from that spirit in some important respects: like other writers
in the post-Jacobin and Napoleonic period, notably the Ideologues, he sought
a means of ‘stabilising’ the French Revolution, building on it but at the same time
restoring social order (Staum, 1996; Pickering, 1993b). His outlook also differed
significantly from much Enlightenment thought in treating theological and meta-
physical ideas as having played essential functions in the past, and as being the
ground out of which science emerges. Most important of all, he insisted that sci-
ence must perform the same social functions as religious thinking, not least in
securing social solidarity.4 There are parallels between this aspect of his position

3
Kolakowski (1972) has a chapter headed ‘Positivism down to David Hume’, in which he re-
fers to ‘medieval positivism’, referring for instance to the ideas of Roger Bacon and William of
Ockham, as well as recognizing the anti-metaphysical arguments of the ancient sceptics. I have
drawn heavily on Kolakowski’s excellent book.
4
In fact, he often portrays the ‘metaphysical’ state or stage as a transitional one in which social
order was not secured, as illustrated by the French Revolution (see Gane, 2006).
From Positivism to Post-Positivism: Progress or Digression? 177

and the philosophies of Hegel and Marx, and it represents a sharp difference
from many later positivists.
Nevertheless, central to positivism for Comte, as well as to 19th-century sta-
tistical investigations of society (from which he nevertheless sought to distance
himself), was the idea that science could provide a sound basis for action, in par-
ticular for reconstructing society in a modern form. Comte argued that socie-
ty should now be organized so as to comply with an understanding of the facts
of human nature, societal development, and current social conditions, as docu-
mented by sociological analysis – rather than being based upon speculative ideas,
not just theological ones but also ‘metaphysical’ notions like human rights, equal-
ity, and democracy. This reflected his conception of science as concerned solely
with what can be empirically documented.
Comte’s conception of science drew on the work of Bacon and Newton as
well as on his knowledge of subsequent scientific investigation across a range
of fields. His position was anti-metaphysical in the sense that he rejected claims
to knowledge of first and final causes, or about the essence of types of phenom-
ena, which had been characteristic of much medieval science. He also rejected
the concept of causation as metaphysical. Instead, he saw the task of science as
empirical documentation and classification of observable features of phenome-
na, and careful inference based on this, with a view to discovering universal laws.
At the same time, he did not see evidence as consisting of particularised sense-
impressions, in the way that many British empiricists did, but adopted a broader
conception which included general not just particular facts. Much the same ori-
entation informed social statistical investigations, except that the generalisations
they produced tended to be probabilistic rather than universal in character; and
the statistical techniques employed were concerned with documenting variation
rather than uniformity (MacKenzie, 1981).
Another distinctive feature of Comte’s positivism was that – rather than be-
lieving that science is based on a single logic – he argued that the various scienc-
es differ somewhat in their assumptions and methods, while at the same time
forming part of an integrated structure. Moreover, he saw those assumptions
and methods as having emerged through a process of discovery in the course of
the historical development of each science (out of theological and metaphysi-
cal ideas). The more abstract, foundational sciences – notably astronomy, math-
ematics and physics – arise first, others only later, building on the knowledge
and methods of these but also developing their own distinctive means of under-
standing the specific character of the phenomena they investigate. Furthermore,
Comte initially saw the whole structure of the sciences as being completed by the
emergence of social science, which he originally called ‘social physics’ but sub-
sequently labelled ‘sociology’, in order to distinguish it from Quételet’s social sta-
178 Martyn Hammersley

tistical discipline that had been given the same name. Comte saw sociology as
serving to coordinate the use of scientific knowledge of all kinds in the recon-
struction of society.5
Comte’s work had an impact on John Stuart Mill, who wrote what was prob-
ably the most influential book on scientific method in the 19th century: A Sys-
tem of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive. While Mill never declared himself to
be a positivist, he was in contact with Comte and shared some key assumptions
with him, in particular an emphasis on science as exemplifying rationality, and
an insistence that all knowledge is founded on empirical evidence, along with an
opposition to metaphysics and all reliance upon a priori argument. While there
are some significant differences in view between them, Mill’s account of science
has often been labelled positivist.6
In the early 20th century a new version of positivism emerged, the logical pos-
itivism of the Vienna Circle, though it drew on the earlier work of the physicist
Ernst Mach, the philosopher Richard Avenarius, the psychologist and statistician
Karl Pearson, and the English philosopher Bertrand Russell. These later positiv-
ists shared some of Comte’s and Mill’s assumptions but rejected others, as well as
differing amongst themselves in some key respects (see Kolakowski, 1972). The
primary concern of the logical positivists was to develop a rigorous conception of
science, in light of the radical implications of Einstein’s theory of relativity – ear-
lier conceptions of science had tended to assume the validity of Newtonian ideas.
As this implies, unlike Comte they treated physics as the most advanced science,

5
Just as Saint-Simon’s followers constituted a movement committed to bringing about the sort
of society envisaged by their leader, so Comte (who had been Saint-Simon’s secretary) saw his
philosophy as providing the charter for a movement that could facilitate the emergence of the
new form of society. Indeed, he proposed the positive philosophy as a civil religion, and pos-
itivist churches were established, not just in France but also in England and in several Latin
American countries, while the influence of positivism was even wider, spreading to other parts
of Europe, including Poland, and to the United States (Hawkins, 1936, 1938; Charlton, 1959;
Simon, 1963; Miłosz, 1983, ch. 8; Wright, 1986).
6
As already mentioned, one of the most important differences, as regards the theory of science,
was that Comte insisted that there were general as well as particular facts, these necessarily be-
ing identified within the systematic conceptual scheme defining the relevant science, rather
than simply being given to consciousness. By contrast, Mill believed that we could only have
experience of particulars. Relatedly, Comte rejected psychology as the basis for science, where-
as Mill took it to be crucial. A further area of disagreement concerned Comte’s treatment of
the concept of cause as metaphysical: Mill argued that this makes it impossible to distinguish
between mere succession of instances of particular types of event, and one type of event gen-
erating another; in other words, it seems to imply that all correlations are laws: see Lewisohn,
1972. Scharff (1995) has argued that these two thinkers held fundamentally different concep-
tions of science, and claims that whereas Mill shares much in common with 20th century log-
ical positivists, Comte’s positivism has much more relevance for post-positivism, that it has
a contemporary philosophical relevance that Mill’s work lacks.
From Positivism to Post-Positivism: Progress or Digression? 179

and as a model for all others. Nevertheless, like earlier positivists, they insisted
that science is demarcated from metaphysics through its rigorous reliance solely
upon logical inference from empirical evidence. However, they drew on advanc-
es in the understanding of logic made at the end of the nineteenth and beginning
of the twentieth centuries, by Frege, Russell and others, which included the idea
that the foundations of mathematics lie in logic. This prompted a linguistic turn
in philosophy, which insisted that the focus should be on the syntax and seman-
tics of statements and their components, rather than (as previously) on the anal-
ysis of psychological judgments. The aim was to clarify what could be meaning-
fully related to empirical givens, and what forms of inference are legitimate from
these. In particular, logical analysis provided a means of identifying spurious
forms of inference and thereby facilitated the rejection of metaphysics. What was
most distinctive about logical positivism was that it ruled out as literally mean-
ingless any statement that was not either analytic or empirically testable.
Another important component of logical positivism was commitment to the
unity of science, this being premised not just on a common conception of scien-
tific method but also on a formal language, drawing on logic, in terms of which
scientific theories in all fields could be formulated. Indeed, these positivists
sometimes went beyond this in claiming that the findings of all of the sciences
would eventually be derivable from the tenets of Physics. Here, there was a sharp
contrast with Comte, who rejected reductionism; and also with Mill who, like
Comte, denied that the inductive methods employed by natural scientists were
applicable in social science, recommending instead what he called the ‘inverse
deductive method’ (Lewisohn, 1972, pp. 323–324). For logical positivists, what
was central to science was the measurement and manipulation of variables, de-
signed to discover universal laws.7 And this encouraged the development of var-
ious kinds of quantitative social science in the first half of the 20th century, these
building on the older social statistics tradition.

Positivism and social science

As we saw, the development of social science was envisaged by Comte as the
crowning achievement in the development of scientific knowledge, and as essen-
tial if this knowledge was to be employed in the reconstruction of society. Later
philosophical positivists frequently had less interest in, and sometimes a nega-
tive view of, social science. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth and early 20th centu-
ries social science was widely promoted as providing an essential foundation for

7
Interestingly, like Comte, they rejected the idea of causation as metaphysical.
180 Martyn Hammersley

sound policymaking, and as involving the application of what could be learned

about scientific inquiry from the natural sciences. In Britain, for example, this
trend drew on the work of Comte and Mill, and often involved sharp rejection of
earlier forms of social thought. Central here was an insistence on the importance
of empirical facts; that knowledge is only possible regarding factual matters – not
theological, metaphysical, or even ethical ones; and that gaining such knowledge
requires the systematic collection and analysis of evidence.
Some social scientists employed experimental method, albeit modified for
the study of human beings, for example in social psychology and among soci-
ologists studying small groups. But, even where experimental investigation was
deemed impossible, the experiment was taken as an ideal that had to be ap-
proximated, for instance by survey researchers. In the US during the 1920s and
30s, some sociologists were directly influenced by logical positivism and relat-
ed trends, such as operationism (see Hammersley, 1989, ch. 4). In the study of
politics, there was rejection of the tradition of political philosophy, which was
normative in character, in favour of investigating how political systems actually
function, and there was an increasing preoccupation with what could be count-
ed and measured, such as voting patterns.
However, both across the social sciences and within particular ones, there was
considerable variation in what was rejected, as well as in views about how social
science ought to be pursued. This partly reflected the influence of different ver-
sions of positivism, but was also shaped by the practical business of trying to do
social science. Indeed, Lazarsfeld (1962) complained that positivist philosophers
of science had failed to take account of the progress that social science had made,
or to offer guidance about the distinctive practical problems that it faced. And
some of the divergences to be found in positivist-influenced research in social sci-
ence reflected variation in the topics and phenomena investigated: studies of de-
cision-making in small groups involved different problems from those concerned
with explaining voting patterns across Western nations, for instance.
Neither experimental nor survey research became the only kind of work car-
ried out in social science, but they were dominant in some disciplines for much
of the 20th century, and they remain influential today – furthermore, the use of
experimental method has recently been boosted as a result of the evidence-based
practice movement (Hammersley, 2013). It is also worth noting that, in the 1950s
and early 60s, the influence of positivism extended even to those methods large-
ly rejected by positivists, such as participant observation, these often being con-
ceptualised in ways that were shaped by positivist ideals (see, for instance, Beck-
er, 1958; McCall, Simmons, 1969).
Of course, those ideals were never uncontested – within social science or,
for that matter, within philosophy – and from the middle of the 20th century on-
From Positivism to Post-Positivism: Progress or Digression? 181

wards they came under increasing challenge in both areas (see Halfpenny, 1982).
In the wake of this, various kinds of post-positivism began to be influential with-
in social science. These drew on other sets of philosophical ideas than positiv-
ism, including pragmatism, Popper’s critical rationalism, phenomenology, criti-
cal realism, hermeneutics, structuralism, and post-structuralism.

Post-positivism in social science

In social science, from the middle of the 20th century, the dominance of quanti-
tative method, and the positivist ideas associated with it, were increasingly ques-
tioned (though in some countries, and some fields, more than others), and there
was a flowering of qualitative inquiry across several disciplines and applied are-
as. This took a variety of forms, some inspired by ethnographic work in anthro-
pology, some by case study and community study in sociology, some by clini-
cal interviewing in psychology. As I have noted, initially qualitative researchers
adopted a defensive stance, seeking to justify their work in broadly positivist
terms, and certainly to defend its scientific character. However, over time, quali-
tative researchers came increasingly to reject positivism, and indeed many came
to question whether a social science was possible or desirable.
I will distinguish between two kinds of post-positivism. Sometimes this la-
bel is restricted to those approaches within social science that have retained cen-
tral elements of a positivist approach – for instance, the idea that natural sci-
ence is a key model for all knowledge production – while revising others in light
of the philosophical criticism of positivism within the analytic tradition of phi-
losophy that arose in the middle of the 20th century, for example in the work of
Quine, Davidson and Putnam, as well as Popper’s falsificationism. Pragmatism
(in the strands deriving from Peirce and Dewey) was also sometimes drawn on,
as a more catholic tradition than positivism, but one that still treated science as
central to modern life, insisting on its practical character and function (see, for
instance, Phillips, Burbules, 2000). This revisionist form of post-positivism sup-
ported the continuation of experimental and survey research, as well as some
kinds of qualitative work, such as the sort of case study championed in recent
Anglo-American political science (see Goertz, Mahoney, 2012).
The second, more radical, interpretation of ‘post-positivism’ constitutes
a much more diverse field, reflecting, in part, the wide variety of philosophical
ideas employed and the conflicts amongst them. These included 19th- and 20th-
century forms of hermeneutics, Marxism, phenomenology, ethnomethodology,
structuralism, post-structuralism, postmodernism, and most recently ‘new ma-
terialism’ and posthumanism (influenced by the work of Deleuze, Latour, Barad,
182 Martyn Hammersley

and others). These approaches pose a much more fundamental challenge to pos-
itivism, and the previously dominant approaches to social science that drew on
it. Not only is the positivist conception of science rejected, but so too is the idea
that natural science is an appropriate model for social inquiry, for example on
the grounds that it amounts to colonisation of the lifeworld by a technicist ori-
entation that is not just epistemologically and ontologically illegitimate but also
ethically and politically undesirable.
A central component of many of these philosophical ideas was what has been
referred to as constructionism, which questioned the realist assumptions that had
previously underpinned both quantitative and much qualitative research: the idea
that there are social phenomena existing independently of the research process
which it is possible to represent accurately. First of all it was argued that social phe-
nomena must be viewed as the products of people exercising agency rather than
as the outcome of causal forces that could be studied in the same manner that
a physicist studies physical objects. Moreover, this conception of people actively
making sense of their environment and acting on the basis of the cultural under-
standings they develop came to be extended to the social scientist her or himself. It
was argued, therefore, that research necessarily constitutes the world it investigates
through the concepts it uses and the methods of inquiry adopted. This implied
that researchers employing different cultural assumptions would produce differ-
ent accounts, and that these would have to be treated as valid in their own terms. It
was insisted that there could be no cultural neutrality, no ‘view from nowhere’, no
documentation of reality as it is ‘in itself ’. With the development of construction-
ism the meaning of ‘positivism’ came to be conflated with that of ‘realism’.
Generally speaking, this second kind of post-positivism has promoted the
value of qualitative data and qualitative forms of analysis; and, in its more radical
forms, these are reinterpreted in terms derived from art and literature, includ-
ing the production of fictions or poems and/or the promotion of various kinds of
performance art (Leavy, 2015). Indeed, some have announced a ‘post-qualitative’
phase (Lather, St. Pierre, 2013). Equally important have been arguments about
the political function of social science, with positivism treated as supporting the
status quo, whereas the point (it is assumed by the critics) is to challenge it (as,
for instance, with the Perestroika movement in political science – see Monroe,
2005). As part of this, there has been explicit commitment to one or another
broadly Leftist orientation, whether this is anti-capitalism, feminism, anti-rac-
ism, queer politics, or disability activism. There have also been ethical as well as
political arguments to the effect that qualitative research must give voice to par-
ticipants, particularly those whose voices are suppressed within current society.8

8
For an interesting assessment of these forms of critical social science from within, see Sayer, 2009.
From Positivism to Post-Positivism: Progress or Digression? 183

All of these developments derive from rejection of any claim by social scientists
to be able to produce objective knowledge, commitment to this often being tak-
en as the central component of positivism.

Discussion
I have traced, in outline, an intellectual trend from a time when positivism ex-
erted a strong influence over social science in the late nineteenth and early
20th centuries to the situation today when, while its influence continues in some
quarters, in others it has been fundamentally rejected by radical forms of post-
positivism. As a result, there is now a huge variety of forms of ‘post-positivist’ re-
search. It is widely assumed that this decline in the influence of positivism rep-
resents progress; though sometimes any notion of progress is itself dismissed as
positivist. Indeed, the sheer diversity of approaches now prevailing in social sci-
ence is regarded as desirable by some, as against what is regarded as the ‘closed’
orientation of positivism (see Hodkinson, 2004; Hammersley, 2005).
It is certainly true that positivism had failings, in both its philosophical and
social science forms. Interestingly, many of these were recognised and discussed
early on by positivists themselves, and by others who shared much the same
outlook: this did not wait for post-positivism (see Kolakowski, 1968). Some of
these problems were irresolvable without significant modification of the initial
assumptions of positivists, along the lines of the first, revisionist, kind of post-
positivism I mentioned. An example would be the problem of how to distinguish
between mere correlations and causal relations. In this connection, Halfpenny
(1982, pp. 77–86) has outlined the problems surrounding efforts to apply the
notion of causal modelling in sociology, and social science more generally. To
a large extent, these problems remain despite subsequent developments in tech-
nique (see Abbott, 1998). Another feature of positivism that has generally been
rejected is the tendency towards radical forms of reductionism or behaviourism,
on the grounds that this loses sight of the distinctive character of social phenom-
ena (Halfpenny, 1982, p. 91).
As this indicates, there are some respects in which it is still necessary to re-
sist the influence of positivism. However, I suggest that, against the background
of the diverse forms of radical post-positivist research now practised, and their
anti-realist character, we ought to re-examine positivism. Much qualitative re-
search in social science today pays insufficient attention to the fact that some
of the claims it makes are quantitative in form, and may require the precision of
counting or measurement if they are to be established. Even more importantly,
there is a widespread failure to recognise the stringent requirements that must
184 Martyn Hammersley

be met if the validity of the conclusions reached is to be well-established.9 Also

lacking, frequently, is clarity about whether the goal of producing explanatory
knowledge has been retained or abandoned; indeed, about whether the enter-
prise involved is still scientific inquiry, or indeed any sort of inquiry (rather than
political activism or storytelling).
What can be learned from positivism, I suggest, is a commitment to the im-
portance, and feasibility, of pursuing scientific knowledge of social phenome-
na; accompanied by recognition of the limits to that knowledge, and of the im-
portance of distinguishing reliable from more speculative knowledge claims
(this being a dimension not a dichotomy); an emphasis on the need for clar-
ity about key concepts, to the degree that this is possible and necessary; and
a stress on the importance of testing knowledge claims, along with the evidence
put forward in support of them. It is not that these commitments have disap-
peared, but they have been greatly weakened in practice as well as being explic-
itly rejected by influential radical commentators (see Hammersley, 2008). The
great virtue of positivism is a cautious commitment to clarifying and seeking
to resolve intellectual problems rather than treating these as fundamental and
completely intractable, so that adopting one view rather than another requires
a leap of faith.
In pursuing a re-evaluation of positivism, it is worth noting two fairly re-
cent developments in scholarship relating to it. The first is a resurgence of in-
terest in the work of Comte. Previously, early Comte had been portrayed as de-
veloping the outlines of a positivist approach, concerned with the production of
objective knowledge, whereas his later work had been dismissed as veering to-
wards a more subjective approach, culminating in his promotion of the positivist
religion. In other words, as Bourdeau (2018) remarks, a distinction was drawn
between a ‘good Comte’ and a ‘bad Comte’. However, more recent scholars have
emphasised the continuities in his work, and argued that the view of him as
a positivist, in the sense of the term used later to refer to Mill and logical positiv-
ists, is misleading. Indeed, it has been suggested that, in important respects, he
was post-positivist avant la lettre (see Scharff, 1995; Gane, 2006; Schmaus, 2008;
Bourdeau et al., 2018). Furthermore, there are parallels between this re-reading
of Comte and some forms of post-positivism in qualitative research today. For
example, Gane argues that Comte’s philosophical system was designed as a fic-
tion to capture the future, with a view to evaluating the present. And he draws
comparisons between Comte’s orientation and ‘postmodern’ writers, such as
Baudrillard (see Gane, 2006, pp. 20–21).

9
For one argument along these lines, see Lubet, 2018.
From Positivism to Post-Positivism: Progress or Digression? 185

I regard this recent Comte scholarship as providing an important counter

to earlier stereotypical accounts of his work, and as underlining his distinctive
attitudes on key issues. It is certainly the case that he had a more sophisticat-
ed understanding of methodological differences across the sciences compared
with later positivists, and did not succumb to their preoccupation with physics
as a model for scientific method. In this respect his descendants are Bachelard
and Canguilhem and their historical epistemology (Lecourt, 1975). However, in
my view this recent scholarship has also given value to aspects of his work that
are positively damaging for social science, such as the idea that it could serve as
a civil religion or as a form of art.
The second development I want to mention has been increased historical
and philosophical attention to the ideas of the logical positivists. This has in-
volved showing that there were significant differences in view amongst mem-
bers of the Vienna Circle, and within the wider positivist movement during the
first half of the 20th century. Equally important has been pointing out that their
thinking was not completely cut off from trends in continental philosophy. It is
also argued that standard accounts of their positions verge on caricature: that,
contrary to what those accounts imply, they recognised the role of non-empirical
axioms in knowledge production and the assumption-ladenness of observation
(see Cartwright et al., 1996; Friedman, 1999, 2000; Richardson, Uebel, 2008).
In these respects, they too were post-positivist, though in the first (revisionist)
sense of that term rather than the second (radical) one.

Conclusion
While for Comte, and others, social science was to play a central role in provid-
ing practical guidance within modern societies, in effect its influence has been
more mediated and contingent. Of much greater significance has been the de-
velopment of organisational systems for counting and measurement designed
to document performance and outcomes of various kinds, whether relating to
individuals, organisations, or whole national economies (see Porter, 1996).
Similarly, while the early positivists anticipated a rapid growth in the produc-
tion of knowledge about the social world, taking the form of universal scien-
tific laws, social science has failed to achieve this goal. It is this failure, above
all, that has led to its diversification and fragmentation today. It seems to me
that we are at an impasse. And, in trying to find our way forward we should
draw on all the resources available to us, rather than dismissing some out of
hand. In other words, there could even be something to be learned from that old
bugbear positivism.
186 Martyn Hammersley

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