The Worlds of Positivism

Presents the first global history of positivism Explores the relationship between natural sciences and the humanities, science and religion, and universalism and cultural diversity on a global scale through Positivism's culture of enquiry Provides a geneaology of scientific governance, with important social and ethical implications for today Appeals to scholars of intellectual history, global history, transnational history, sociology, and philosophy

Johannes Feichtinger is Senior Research Associate at the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Visiting Professor for modern history and the philosophy of science at the University of Vienna, Austria. Franz L. Fillafer is Lecturer in modern and contemporary history at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Jan Surman is Visiting Scholar at the Max Web Centre for Advanced Cultural and Social Studies, University of Erfurt, Germany.

1. Introduction: Particularizing Positivism.- I. Empires of Positivism.- 2. Striking a Chord: The Reception of Comte's Positivism in Colonial India.- 3. Positivism, Revolution and History in Brazil.- 4. Positivism in the Late Ottoman Empire: The "Young Turks" as Mediators and Multipliers.- II. Positive Knowledge and the Making of Positivism.- 5. An Enlightened Path to Positivism? Reflections on the Institutionalization of Science in Bourbon Spain.- 6. Trading Epistemological Insults: "Positive Knowledge" and Natural Science in Germany, 1800-1850.- 7. The French Philosophical Crisis of the 1860s and the Invention of the "Positivist School".- III. The Liberal Politics of Science and Society.- 8. Habsburg Positivism: The Politics of Positive Knowledge in Imperial and Post-Imperial Austria, 1804-1938.- 9. The Contexts of Early Polish Positivisms, 1840s-1900s.- 10. Positivism in Late Tsarist Russia: Its Introduction, Penetration and Diffusion.- IV. Positivist Aftermath.- 11. Positivism in the Northern Peripheries: Generations of Positivist Philosophers in Sweden and Its Neighboring Countries.- 12. Dilthey and Carnap: The Feeling of Life, the Scientific Worldview, and the Elimination of Metaphysics.- 13. Epilogue: The Worlds of Positivism: An Analytical Synopsis.