Positivist thought in Latin America

Between 1850 and the 1920s European positivism became a major intellectual movement in Latin America. It asserted that all knowledge came from experience; that scientific thinking was the model for philosophizing and that the search for first causes or ultimate reason typical of religion and metaphysics, was an obsolete mode of thinking. Positivism set out to discover the most general features of experience. Its tasks were to use them to explain and predict phenomena, to develop a social science that would furnish objective grounds for moral choice and to help create the best society possible.

In Latin America positivism became a social philosophy which represented a cogent alternative to romanticism, eclecticism, Catholicism and traditional Hispanic values. It offered the prospect of a secular society in which the knowledge gained from science and industry would bring the benefits of order and progress. It assumed that the social sciences had the power to improve the human condition and it demanded political action. Three main currents were in evidence: autochthonous positivism indigenous to the region and concerned with local social and political issues, social positivism derived from Auguste Comte and stressing the historical nature of social change, and evolutionary positivism influenced by Herbert Spencer and asserting the biological nature of society.

Autochthonous positivism emerged in the 1830s from the influx of liberal ideas which followed the wars of independence fought on the US continent by those wishing to gain freedom from Spain. Urging an intellectual revolution, swift social change and material progress, autochthonous positivism paved the way for European positivism proper. Social positivism appeared around the 1850s and argued for the necessity of educational reforms to solve the continent’s problems. It required participation in political life and became a radical force in spite of opposition from supporters of the status quo. By the 1880s evolutionary positivism had steered the movement in a conservative direction in support of laissez-faire policies, individualism and gradual change.