Positivism 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 first called the doctrine positivism, but some of the positivist concepts may be traced to the British philosopher David Hume, the French philosopher Duc de Saint-Simon, and the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Comte chose the word positivism on the ground that it indicated the "reality" and "constructive tendency" that he claimed for the theory aspect of the doctrine. He was, in the ma