Bennett David
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1S 5B6.
Soc Sci Med. 2005 Jun;60(12):2685-95. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2004.11.003. Epub 2004 Dec 22.
Revisiting debates about philosophical approaches in medical geography suggests that logical positivism may have been prematurely discarded. An analysis of authoritative texts in medical geography and their sources in human geography shows that logical positivism has been conflated with Comtean positivism, science, empiricism, quantification, science politics, scientism and so on, to produce the "standard version" of the all-purpose pejorative "positivism", which it is easy to dismiss as an evil. It is argued that the standard version fails to do justice to logical positivism, being constructed on sources which are at some distance from the logical positivist movement itself. An alternative approach is then developed, an historically and geographically situated interpretation of logical positivism as a deliberately and knowingly constructed oppositional epistemology within an oppressive and anti-scientific culture predicated on idealist intuitionism. Contrasting the standard version with this alternative reading of logical positivism suggests that much may have been lost in human, and thus, medical geography, by throwing out the logical positivist baby with the "positivism" bath water. It is concluded that continuing to unpack the standard version of logical positivism may identify benefits from a more nuanced appreciation of logical positivism, but it is premature to take these to the level of detailed impacts on the kinds of medical geographies that could be done or the ways of doing them.
重新审视医学地理学中关于哲学方法的争论表明，逻辑实证主义可能被过早摒弃了。对医学地理学权威文本及其在人文地理学中的来源进行分析后发现，逻辑实证主义已与孔德实证主义、科学、经验主义、量化、科学政治学、科学主义等混为一谈，从而产生了通用贬义词“实证主义”的“标准版本”，人们很容易将其视为一种邪恶而摒弃。有人认为，这个标准版本没有公正地对待逻辑实证主义，它是基于与逻辑实证主义运动本身有一定距离的来源构建的。接着提出了一种替代方法，即对逻辑实证主义进行历史和地理定位的解释，将其视为在基于唯心主义直觉主义的压迫性和反科学文化中刻意构建的对立认识论。将标准版本与这种对逻辑实证主义的另类解读进行对比表明，在人文地理学乃至医学地理学中，把逻辑实证主义这一“婴儿”与“实证主义”这盆“洗澡水”一起倒掉，可能已经失去了很多。结论是，继续剖析逻辑实证主义的标准版本可能会从对逻辑实证主义更细致入微的理解中发现益处，但现在就将其提升到对可能开展的医学地理学类型或其开展方式产生详细影响的层面还为时过早。
