<P> Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that certain ("positive") knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations . Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all certain knowledge . Positivism holds that valid knowledge (certitude or truth) is found only in this a posteriori knowledge . </P> <P> Verified data (positive facts) received from the senses are known as empirical evidence; thus positivism is based on empiricism . </P> <P> Positivism also holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws . Introspective and intuitive knowledge is rejected, as are metaphysics and theology because metaphysical and theological claims cannot be verified by sense experience . Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought, the modern sense of the approach was formulated by the philosopher Auguste Comte in the early 19th century . Comte argued that, much as the physical world operates according to gravity and other absolute laws, so does society, and further developed positivism into a Religion of Humanity . </P> <P> The English noun positivism was re-imported in the 19th century from the French word positivisme, derived from positif in its philosophical sense of' imposed on the mind by experience' . The corresponding adjective (lat . positīvus) has been used in a similar sense to discuss law (positive law compared to natural law) since the time of Chaucer . </P>

Who is closely associated with the term positivism