POSITIVISM IS SELF-DEFEATING: AN ENVIRONMENTALIST SCORE-SHEET OF SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGHS

ADEOLA SELEEM OLANIYAN

ABSTRACT

Positivism (and, causally, neo-positivism) is a human ideology promoting a scientific and technological mindset. It took its birth in the nineteenth century in Germany and spread like the weird wind across European and American countries until it attained its equilibrium in the 20th century. Masterminding science and technology, its manifesto promised to wipe away all human tears in all spheres, including material, epistemic and spiritual sufferings. It is high time positivism is assessed to see how far it has gone in fulfilling its promises to humanity. Hence, it becomes exposed that positivism, through advancement in science and technology, brought about innovations, from agricultural and food production to drugs and medical advancement, from transportation and information advancement to building and construction technological advancement, just to mention a few. Of course, it is unreasonably disputable that it has brought about significant growth when we assess it from these lenses. Glory be to positivism on this ground! However, an assessment beyond this surface exposes that the changes are just unilateral growths devoid of development in the real sense. Lives are saved in ‘retail’ through advanced medical care but maimed in ‘wholesale’ in war with weapons of massive destruction. People get to their destination easier and faster, but an untimely journey into heaven in masses through a plane crash occasionally results. Through information technology, habits, including corrupt ones, spread like epidemic viruses without necessarily going to places. Almighty Dollars are being worshiped and glorified in the love for material things at the expense of Almighty God. In a word, rather than eliminating the suffering of humanity as earlier promised, what it does is culminating to it. With this scoresheet at the back of our mind, this paper submits that positivism, as an ideology, is a failure for reducing reality to its “physical” component while neglecting its complementary counterpart, “metaphysical” ones as contained in the Holy Scriptures.