Résumé :
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Attacks on positivism in the nursing literature have come to play a central role in providing a justification for qualitative nursing research methodologies. This article examines the epistemological basis of positivism, and its eventual fall from favour as a philosophy of science. The decline of positivism as cogent philosophy of science casts doubt on its usefulness in justifying an alternative to scientific methodology. The article argues that accounts of positivism in the nursing literature are anachronistic and confused, and that the use of positivism to represent scientific orthodoxy leads to some spurious oppositions in the study of human affaires, such as facts and values, objectivity and subjectivity, and art and science. These divisions are uncongenial to productive research, and obscure more subtle positions that can be taken with regard to epistemiology and the nature of truth.
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