Abstract
An answer to the fundamental question of the relation man/universe requires a broad cultural discussion. It was characteristic of the Enlightenment, the movement of ideas current during the 18th century that distrusted tradition in cultural matters. Truth was to be approached through reason. At the end of that period Auguste Comte (1798-1857) founded a movement that advocated that intellectual activities should be confined to observable facts. The reason why this movement was called “positivism” is that Comte called observable facts “positive”. This point of view was developed much later by a group of philosophers working in Vienna at the beginning of the 20th century. They were known as the “Vienna Circle”. They maintained that scientific knowledge is the only kind of factual knowledge.
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Chela-Flores, J. (2011). Cultural frontiers of astrobiology. In: The Science of Astrobiology. Cellular Origin, Life in Extreme Habitats and Astrobiology, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-1627-8_13
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