[Author’s Name]
[Institution’s Name]
Essay on Positivism and Post-Positivism
When most people in our society think about science, they think about some guy in a white lab coat working at a lab bench mixing up chemicals. They think of science as boring, cut-and-dry, and they think of the scientist as narrow-minded and esoteric (the ultimate nerd -- think of the humorous but nonetheless mad scientist in the Back to the Future movies, for instance). A lot of our stereotypes about science come from a period where science was dominated by a particular philosophy -- positivism -- that tended to support some of these views.
Here, I want to suggest (no matter what the movie industry may think) that science has moved on in its thinking into an era of post-positivism where many of those stereotypes of the scientist no longer hold up (Rai, Blydenburgh, 30).
I am exaggerating the positivist position (although you may be amazed at how close to this some of them actually came) in order to make a point............
