Who Knows for a Fact?

Abstract

One of the claims for modern social science is that it infers from facts. Some of this stems from the positivism of Auguste Comte, who argued that there were three stages in the evolution of knowledge — fictions, as in myths; metaphysics, as in speculative philosophy; and scientific theories, based on evidence. Yet Comte qualified claims to know something ‘for a fact’ and warned against assuming to do so rather than allowing for a high degree of scepticism. He submitted that the proper function of intellect was the service of society, was critical of mathematical modelling, claiming that algebra could as readily usurp rather than enhance understanding, and declared that if a theorem was not approached in the same way as a poem, it could deprive us of our humanity (Comte, 1848, 1865; Muglioni, 1996).