Positivism? I am confused…
Since I have started reading anglo-saxon IS papers, I was wondering why IS researchers are so often referring to Positivism. I thought, that Positivism was a philosophical school associated with the Vienna circle, which was refuted by Popper.
“He [Popper] articulated his own view of science, and his criticisms of the positivists, in his first work, published under the title Logik der Forschung in 1934. The book — which he was later to claim rang the death knell for positivism — attracted more attention than Popper had anticipated…” [1]
Popper discussed the positivist assumptions in his seminal work “The logic of scientific discovery”. Here are some insightful citations:
… This shows how the inductivist criterion of demarcation fails to draw a dividing line between scientific and metaphysical systems, and why it must accord them equal status; for the verdict of the positivist dogma of meaning is that both are systems of meaningless pseudo-statements. Thus instead of eradicating metaphysics from the empirical sciences, positivism leads to the invasion of metaphysics into the scientific realm. ([2], p.14)
“… The fact that value judgements influence my proposal does not mean that I am making the mistake of which I have accused the positivists — that of trying to kill metaphysics by calling it names. […] I am inclined to think that scientific discovery is impossible without faith in ideas which are of a purely speculative kind…” ([2], p 15-16)
“The criterion of demarcation inherent in inductive logic — that is, the positivistic dogma of meaning — is equivalent to the requirement that all the statements of empirical science […] must be capable of being finally decided, with respect to their truth and falsity.” ([2], p.17)
“Thus, inference to theories, from singular statements which are ‘verified by experience’ (whatever that may mean), is logically inadmissable. Theories are, therefore, never empirically verifiable.” ([2], p. 18)
“In other words: I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positivist sende; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience.” ([2], p. 18)
If you look at how the IS community has defined positivism, you will find some surprises:
“At the heart of positivism is Karl Popper’s dichotomous differentiation between “scientific” theories and “myth”. A scientific theory is a theory whose predictions can be empirically falsified, i.e., shown to be wrong.” [3]
“This view of positivism represents a marriage of three traditions: (1) the empiricist tradition, which sought the foundation of human knowledge in indubitable experience of the external world, and thus relies on publicly verifiable, observable sensory data, systematically collected and collated, as the route to knowledge. (Ackroyd and Hughes 1992, pp. 21-22); (2) the rationalist tradition, which argued that the route to indubitable knowledge is not through empirical experience of the empirical world, but through logical, that is rational principles which are beyond doubt (p. 23); and (3) the critical rationalist tradition, whose primary proponent, Karl Popper, concluded that positive evidence (confirmation) and the inductive method (the search for rules that lead from limited observations to the establishment of valid generalizations) are not at the heart of science. Rather, negative evidence (falsification) and deduction are at the core (Schweizer 1998, p. 44). Arising out of this synthesis is hypothetico-deductive logic, which is viewed as being central to the world of positivist research today (Lee 1999).” [4, p. 22]
This is not positivism! In fact, all the three traditions mentioned by Lee have been incorporated by Poppers critical rationalism. Hence, the authors are actually describing Poppers’ critical rationalism, as shown in [3]:
“A scientific theory, in contrast to Psychoanalysis, is one that can be empirically falsified. This is the Falsification Principle and the core of positivism. Basically, experience can show theories to be wrong, but can never prove them right. It is an underlying principle that theories can never be shown to be correct.” [3]
So, obviously ‘positivist’ is a widely mis-used term in IS. “Positivist” IS researchers are “Critical rationalists”.
But, how do we empirically test our theories? Well, Popper [2] says that hypotheses are universal statements, e.g.:
All ravens are black.
Such universial statement need to be transformed to existential statements (predictions), e.g.:
The raven in the backyard should be black.
Straub et al. transfer this mechanism into practice:
“Viewed from a positivist point of view, the objective of statistics employed by the QPR methods is to falsify the null hypothesis, which is the assumption that the data in the dependent variable are not affected by the data in the independent variable or variables. Since each theoretical hypothesis (the hypothesis as stated in the theory) should be the exact opposite of its null hypothesis by predicting a difference in the dependent variable, it follows logically that if the null hypothesis is rejected, then presumably the theoretical hypothesis is supported. […] It is based on this probability that the null hypothesis is rejected and by implication that the theoretical hypothesis is supported.” [3]
Now, I am still wondering whether it is possible to apply inductive mechanism, such as testing the significance, in a critical rationalist setting.
In the example of the ravens my null hypothesis would be that ravens are non-black. My alternative hypothesis would be that ravens are black. Now, I am starting to observe ravens, and my data (i.e. the color of the observed ravens) shows that my null hypothesis is falsified. Therefore, ravens are black. But haven’t I reached this conclusion by applying the inductive principle? Isn’t this violating the fundamental principle of critical rationalism?
Can anybody help me on this?
References
[1] Thornton, Stephen, “Karl Popper”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2006 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2006/entries/popper/>.
[2] Popper, Karl R., “The Logic of Scientific Discovery”, Routledge Classics, 2002.
[3] Straub, Detmar, David Gefen, and Marie-Claude Boudreau (2004). “The ISWorld Quantitative, Positivist Research Methods Website,” (Ed) Dennis Galletta, http://www.dstraub.cis.gsu.edu:88/quant/. Last updated: January 7, 2005.
[4] Sarker, S., & Lee, A. S., “Using a Positivist Case Research Methodology to Test Three Competing Theories-In-Use of Business Process Reengineering”, Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 2(7), 1-74, 2002.
