Logical positivism thrived during the early part of the 20th century,
especially in Britain and the USA. The main objective in this metatheory is
to practise science as objectively as possible, and to try and verify all
statements. The point of departure was that personal values, which are
subjective, are not important enough to include in research projects. Values
are regarded as meaningless, seeing that one cannot verify them. It is
proposed that if the research object cannot be proved to be right or wrong,
it is not researchable. Emotions like hope, fear, love, religious beliefs and
political commitment are seen as not important, because they cannot be
measured and checked in the same way scientific statements can be
checked.
Plato was the first philosopher who tried to get people to think clearly. Read
more about his views in RW p 7.
We are now going to discuss the three main divisions of logical empiricism
or positivism.
Linguistic analysis (RW pp 9±11)
The history of linguistic analysis is discussed on p 10 of RW. It is proposed
that the main aim in linguistic analysis is to clear our minds of all words
that muddle us and confuse the scientific enterprise. You can read a lot
about the meaning of words in pp 1±7 in RW.
An example of a statement that would
