Definition of "positivist"

The English mind is prone to positivism and kindred forms of materialistic philosophy, and we must expect the derivative theory to be taken up in that interest. We have no predilection for that school, but the contrary. If we had, we might have looked complacently upon a line of criticism which would indirectly, but effectively, play into the hands of positivists and materialistic atheists generally.

1886, Thomas H. Huxley, Science and Morals

By discouraging what they conceive to be the weakness of their master, the English Positivists have broken the strength of their religion. A man who has faith must be prepared not only to be a martyr, but to be a fool.

1905, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “Christmas and the Aesthetes”, in Heretics

A modern intellectual comes in and sees a poker. He is a positivist; he will not begin with any dogmas about the nature of man, or any day-dreams about the mystery of fire. He will begin with what he can see, the poker; and the first thing he sees about the poker is that it is crooked.

1912, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, “The Man Who Thinks Backwards”, in A Miscellany of Men

Shall we erect the mystery into an Unknowable, like Spencer, and call ourselves Agnostics with a capital letter, like Huxley? Shall we follow Frederic Harrison, making an inadequate divinity out of our impotence? I have read the books of the "Positivists", and attended their imitation church in London, but I did not get any satisfaction from them.

1917, Upton Sinclair, “The Knowable”, in The Profits of Religion […] ‎, book 7

However vigorously he may assert that he is a pure positivist, who has long left behind him supernatural tendencies and weaknesses, and now accepts only what is immediately certain, he will never be free of the secret uncertainty whether positivism really has the last word.

2007 May 11, Ross Douthat, quoting Joseph Ratzinger, “Be Not Afraid?”, in The Atlantic‎

Freedom of expression tends to be associated primarily with nineteenth-century English philosopher John Stuart Mill, whose treatise On Liberty is most frequently reached for by freedom of expression positivists, although it did not mention any “free marketplace” of ideas.

2020, Marcus Gilroy-Ware, chapter 4, in After the Fact?, Repeater

The positivist tradition contains some rigorous, well-argued and stimulating methodological discussions; such material should be required reading for qualitative researchers wishing to enhance the quality of their practice.

1999, Clive Seale, The Quality of Qualitative Research, page 34

Making use of the conceptual vocabulary of science to exclude a possibility that in a present state of knowledge—or a former one—that vocabulary would seem to exclude, has been the mission of positivist thinking since Auguste Comte declared scientific knowledge effectively complete.

2010 June 4, Marilynne Robinson, “Marilynne Robinson: Can science solve life's mysteries?”, in The Guardian‎

While a positivist view of history—the 19th-century notion that history was akin to a science, and that the accumulation of historical facts would eventually lead to an objective understanding of events—fell out of favor long ago, this idea seems to remain the operative assumption behind traditional history curricula that emphasize content, chronology, and comprehensiveness.

2016 February 8, Christine Gross-Loh, “How to Make History Exciting”, in The Atlantic‎