|
Barfield defines positivism as "the dogma that nothing really exists except what is actually or notionally perceptible by the senses" (EC 6). "It is implicit in positivism," he writes in "The Rediscovery of Meaning," "that man can never really know anything about his specifically human self--his own inner being--anymore than he can ever really know anything about the meaning of the world of nature by which he is surrounded" (RM 12). Its influence has been pervasive. ("It is no part of my case," Barfield concedes, "that push-and-pull empiricism is weak or ineffectual, only that it is, like other giants, ignorant" [PD 35-36].) Positivism is not usually stated but rather just assumed. "The conclusions of positivism remain concealed (or perhaps 'occult' is the word) as habit, even where its premises have been explicitly abandoned as theory" (EC 18-19). Sometimes, a thinker may remain positivistic in whole or in part without even being conscious of the fact--a phenomenon Barfield describes as R.U.P. (Residue of Unresolved Positivism). Barfield liked to imagine the changes in human thought that might accompany the demise of positivism. And once we find ourselves rid of the last traces of our positivist world view,
|