Positivism is the leading trend in sociology of the XIX century., software, methodological and ideological setting which were formulated and developed in the writings of Comte, Spencer and others. The main aspiration of positivism - the rejection of speculative reasoning about the company, creating "positive" social theory, what was supposed to be equally probative and sahalinskaja, as a natural-scientific theory. And speculative metaphysics based on the philosophy of history positivism sought to contrast method of observation, comparative, historical and, to a certain extent, although to a lesser extent, mathematical methods.

Characteristic features of early positivism naturalism were, organsism, evolutionism and phenomenalism. His model served as biology, anatomy and human physiology, and to some extent mechanics.

 Positivism postulated the existence of unchangeable laws of functioning and development of society, considered as part of or as a continuation of the natural laws and, along with the last, treated phenomenalistic, because there is neither knowledge of the causes and essence of social phenomena (phenomenalism — a subjective-idealist trend in philosophy, that denies the existence of the objective world and recognize only the reality of the phenomenon of consciousness).

Positivism was constantly drawn to various forms of reductionism (mixing social data to simpler forms of expression, easier analysis).

Organzation and evoluzionistica components of early positivism was developed in the positivist movements of the second half of the XIX century. Exploring society not so much in dynamics, how many static (as a system, in a state of equilibrium), organsism often brought to the extremes rather vulgar analogy between society and the human body.

In addition to these currents, to of positivism are also the mechanism, geographic, racial-anthropological school and some other. The failure of biological and mechanistic reductionism that has become quite apparent towards the end of the nineteenth century., led to the crisis of positivism and contributed to the development of psychology in sociology, as well as the emergence of various forms antipositivism sociology.

However, the positivist tradition does not die out and continued in the XX century. g substantially transformed within neopositivism in sociology.

The basic principles of neopositivism are in recognition of the fact, what:

1)  social phenomena obey the laws, common to the whole of reality — natural and social-historical (naturalism);

2)  methods of social research should be the same exact, harsh and objective, as methods of natural science (stsm);

3)  "subjective aspects" of human behavior can be explored l like through the open behavior (behaviorism);

4)  the truth of scientific concepts and assertions should be based on empirical procedures (verifcations);

5)  all social phenomena should be described and quantified (quantification);

6)  sociology as science should be free from value judgments and communications with the ideology (methodological objectivism).

In the period after the Second world war, neopositivism is widespread in Western Europe and especially in the United States, due to the expansion of empirical research, using the results of social studies, the technocratic and the liberal reformist programs. The completion of the process of institutionalization of sociology, its transformation into an independent scientific discipline are strongly associated with the popularity of the ideas of neopositivism.