Positivism

Part I of Essay
is a system of philosophy based on experience and experimental knowledge of natural sensation, in which metaphysics and theology are regarded as inadequate and imperfect systems of knowledge. (www.eb.com) The 19th-century French mathematician and philosopher Auguste Comte ....

Part II of Essay
.... to accept this religious development of his philosophy, because it seemed to contradict the original positivist philosophy. Many of Comte's doctrines were later adapted and developed by the British social philosophers John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer and by the Austrian philosopher and physicist Ernst Mach.(www.encyclopedia.com) During the early 20th century a group of philosophers who were concerned with developments in modern science rejected the traditional positivist ideas that held personal experience to be the basis of true knowledg ....