Publication Details

Abstract

The most part of Berr’s scientific and managing work was in his effort to put through the idea of a scientific historiography within the frame of a united synthetic science, which at the same time was intended to play the role of a worldview. From this point of view Berr belongs to the first period of positivism. Even some of the positivistic streams in contemporary French philosophy and historiography go back to him. At a closer view it becomes obvious, however, that Berr’s thinking derives from deeper metaphysical grounds. It is first of all his concept of "logical tendency", which grows out of these grounds and which has a conciderable validity in his philosophy. The idea of a united synthetic science is a conretization of this concept, regardless to the fact, that Berr himself rejected the metaphysics later on.