Webster’s dictionary defines epistemology as the study or a theory of the nature and grounds of knowledge, especially with reference to its limits and validity. Burrell et al.
(1979) discuss the epistemological assumptions made in research are defined as
assumptions about the grounds of knowledge and how one might begin to understand the world and communicate this knowledge to fellow human beings. This concept encompasses the type of knowledge or reality which can be obtained and how it can be sorted out into truths or falsehoods. The distinction between truth as being hard and tangible or soft and objective also comes into the discussion here. The dichotomy is between whether a truth actually exists or whether it is something which is entirely based on personal experience or perception. Burrell et al. (1979) define the concepts of positivism and anti-positivism as being relevant at the epistemological stage.
Positivism was a philosophical concept pioneered by Comte and Henri in the mid 19th century which proposed that the only authentic knowledge is scientific knowledge, and that such knowledge can only come from positive affirmation of theories through strict
scientific method. Enlightenment period philosophers such as Kant proposed that humans should not blindly accept institutions and teachings such as those put forward by the church and that humans should be investigate the world using observation, experimentation, and reason. This approach to the philosophy of science was also derived from views
popularized through enlightenment players such as Pierre-Simon Laplace, the French mathematician and astronomer (Wiegand, 1958). Comte saw scientific method as replacing metaphysics in the history of thought, and observed the circular dependence of theory and observation in science. Locke and Hume posited that the world was a series of phenomenon – of sudden appearances and the knowledge gained from observation, and experimentation was simple a clarification of relationships between these phenomena (Wiegand, 1958).
In his book Introduction to Scientific Revolutions, Hacking (1981) characterizes positivism as the belief in the following nine points:
Realism: Science is an attempt to find out about one real world. Truths about the world are true regardless of what people think, and there is a unique best description of any chosen aspect of the world.
Demarcation: There is a sharp distinction between scientific theories and other kinds of belief.
Science is cumulative: Although false starts may be quite common, science builds on what is already known.
Observation-theory distinction: There is a fairly sharp contrast between reports of observations and statements of theory.
Foundations: Observation and experiment provide the foundations for and justification of hypotheses and theories.
Theories have a deductive structure and tests of theories proceed by deducing observation-reports from theoretical postulates.
Scientific concepts are rather precise, and the terms used in science have fixed meanings.
There is a context of justification and a context of discovery. We should distinguish (a) the psychological or social circumstances in which a discovery is made from (b) the logical basis for justifying belief in the facts that have been discovered.
Positivism is also depicted as "the view that all true knowledge is scientific," and that all things are ultimately measurable (Bullock and Trombley, 1999). Because of its close association with reductionism, positivism and reductionism involve the view that "entities of one kind are reducible to entities of another," such as societies to numbers, or mental events to chemical events. Positivism also involves the contention that "processes are reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events," and even that "social processes are reducible to relationships between and actions of individuals," or that "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems" (Bullock and Trombley, 1999).
In contrast to positivism is the philosophical approach of anti-positivism which supports that social sciences need to create and use different scientific methods than those used within the natural sciences. In the 19th century, positivism began to be questioned by philosophers like Wilhelm Dilthey (Dilthey, 1883) and in the 20th century by Heinrich Rickert (Rickert, 1962) who argued that the world of nature and society are different, as human societies have unique aspects like meanings, symbols, rules, norms, and values all of which make up the entity of culture. The German sociologist, Max Weber, introduced the term anti-positivism or humanistic sociology which again posits that sociological research must use specific tools and methods which differ from those used in the natural sciences and which concentrate on humans and their cultural values (Wiegand, 1958).
While most sociologists would agree that scientific method, or the techniques for investigating phenomena and acquiring new knowledge through gathering observable, measurable evidence, is an important part of sociology, extreme positivism is not found often. Many social scientists realize that it is hard to create a law that would hold true in all cases where human behaviour is concerned, and that while behaviour of groups may be able to be explained and predicted with some probability, it is much harder to explain the
behaviour of each individual. Following this logic, however, could mean that observations at an individual level are not applicable at an aggregate level which refutes the
generalizability of results from social research. Hence most sociologists today are placed somewhere between positivism and anti-positivism, arguing that human behaviour is more complex than animal behaviour or the movements of planets. Humans have free will, imagination and can be irrational which means that behaviour is difficult to order into rigid social laws, perhaps the reason the term social “norm” is widely used. As will be detailed in the Research Design section of this chapter (3.3) this is the position – between positivism and anti-positivism – taken by the researcher in this study.