Positivism is a theory of knowledge according to which the only kind of sound knowledge available to human kind is that if science grounded in observation.
(1891). As given as an epigraph in M.J. Vinod and Meena Deshpande, Contemporary Political Theory (2013), 3.
Positivism stands or falls with the principle of scientism, that is that the meaning of knowledge is defined by what the sciences do and can thus be adequately explicated through the methodological analysis of scientific procedures.
Knowledge and Human Interests (1968), 67.