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Positivism

Positivism is a philosophical school that holds that all genuine knowledge is either true by definition or positive—meaning a posteriori facts derived by reason and logic from sensory experience. Other ways of knowing, such as intuition, introspection, or religious faith, are rejected or considered meaningless.

Although the positivist approach has been a recurrent theme in the history of western thought, modern positivism was first articulated in the early 19th century by Auguste Comte. His school of sociological positivism holds that society, like the physical world, operates according to general laws. After Comte, positivist schools arose in logic, psychology, economics, historiography, and other fields of thought. Generally, positivists attempted to introduce scientific methods to their respective fields. Since the turn of the 20th century, positivism, although still popular, has declined under criticism in parts of social sciences from antipositivists and critical theorists, among others, for its alleged scientism, reductionism, overgeneralizations, and methodological limitations.

Etymology
The English noun positivism in this meaning was imported in the 19th century from the French word positivisme, derived from positif in its philosophical sense of 'imposed on the mind by experience'. The corresponding adjective (positīvus) has been used in a similar sense to discuss law (positive law compared to natural law) since the time of Chaucer. ''

Background
Kieran Egan argues that positivism can be traced to the philosophy side of what Plato described as the quarrel between philosophy and poetry, later reformulated by Wilhelm Dilthey as a quarrel between the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften) and the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften).

In the early nineteenth century, massive advances in the natural sciences encouraged philosophers to apply scientific methods to other fields. Thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon, Pierre-Simon Laplace and Auguste Comte believed that the scientific method, the circular dependence of theory and observation, must replace metaphysics in the history of thought.

Comte's positivism
Auguste Comte (1798–1857) first described the epistemological perspective of positivism in The Course in Positive Philosophy, a series of texts published between 1830 and 1842. These texts were followed in 1844 by A General View of Positivism (published in French 1848, English in 1865). The first three volumes of the Course dealt chiefly with the physical sciences already in existence (mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology), whereas the latter two emphasized the inevitable coming of social science. Observing the circular dependence of theory and observation in science, and classifying the sciences in this way, Comte may be regarded as the first philosopher of science in the modern sense of the term. For him, the physical sciences had necessarily to arrive first, before humanity could adequately channel its efforts into the most challenging and complex "Queen science" of human society itself. His View of Positivism therefore set out to define the empirical goals of sociological method:

Comte offered an account of social evolution, proposing that society undergoes three phases in its quest for the truth according to a general "law of three stages". Comte intended to develop a secular-scientific ideology in the wake of European secularisation.

Comte's stages were (1) the theological, (2) the metaphysical, and (3) the positive. The theological phase of man was based on whole-hearted belief in all things with reference to God. God, Comte says, had reigned supreme over human existence pre-Enlightenment. Humanity's place in society was governed by its association with the divine presences and with the church. The theological phase deals with humankind's accepting the doctrines of the church (or place of worship) rather than relying on its rational powers to explore basic questions about existence. It dealt with the restrictions put in place by the religious organization at the time and the total acceptance of any "fact" adduced for society to believe.

Comte describes the metaphysical phase of humanity as the time since the Enlightenment, a time steeped in logical rationalism, to the time right after the French Revolution. This second phase states that the universal rights of humanity are most important. The central idea is that humanity is invested with certain rights that must be respected. In this phase, democracies and dictators rose and fell in attempts to maintain the innate rights of humanity.

The final stage of the trilogy of Comte's universal law is the scientific, or positive, stage. The central idea of this phase is that individual rights are more important than the rule of any one person. Comte stated that the idea of humanity's ability to govern itself makes this stage inherently different from the rest. There is no higher power governing the masses and the intrigue of any one person can achieve anything based on that individual's free will. The third principle is most important in the positive stage. Comte calls these three phases the universal rule in relation to society and its development. Neither the second nor the third phase can be reached without the completion and understanding of the preceding stage. All stages must be completed in progress.

Comte believed that the appreciation of the past and the ability to build on it towards the future was key in transitioning from the theological and metaphysical phases. The idea of progress was central to Comte's new science, sociology. Sociology would "lead to the historical consideration of every science" because "the history of one science, including pure political history, would make no sense unless it was attached to the study of the general progress of all of humanity". As Comte would say: "from science comes prediction; from prediction comes action". It is a philosophy of human intellectual development that culminated in science. The irony of this series of phases is that though Comte attempted to prove that human development has to go through these three stages, it seems that the positivist stage is far from becoming a realization. This is due to two truths: The positivist phase requires having a complete understanding of the universe and world around us and requires that society should never know if it is in this positivist phase. Anthony Giddens argues that since humanity constantly uses science to discover and research new things, humanity never progresses beyond the second metaphysical phase. Comte's fame today owes in part to Emile Littré, who founded The Positivist Review in 1867. As an approach to the philosophy of history, positivism was appropriated by historians such as Hippolyte Taine. Many of Comte's writings were translated into English by the Whig writer, Harriet Martineau, regarded by some as the first female sociologist. Debates continue to rage as to how much Comte appropriated from the work of his mentor, Saint-Simon. He was nevertheless influential: Brazilian thinkers turned to Comte's ideas about training a scientific elite in order to flourish in the industrialization process. Brazil's national motto, Ordem e Progresso ("Order and Progress") was taken from the positivism motto, "Love as principle, order as the basis, progress as the goal", which was also influential in Poland.

In later life, Comte developed a 'religion of humanity' for positivist societies in order to fulfil the cohesive function once held by traditional worship. In 1849, he proposed a calendar reform called the 'positivist calendar'. For close associate John Stuart Mill, it was possible to distinguish between a "good Comte" (the author of the Course in Positive Philosophy) and a "bad Comte" (the author of the secular-religious system). The system was unsuccessful but met with the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of Species to influence the proliferation of various secular humanist organizations in the 19th century, especially through the work of secularists such as George Holyoake and Richard Congreve. Although Comte's English followers, including George Eliot and Harriet Martineau, for the most part rejected the full gloomy panoply of his system, they liked the idea of a religion of humanity and his injunction to "vivre pour autrui" ("live for others", from which comes the word "altruism").

The early sociology of Herbert Spencer came about broadly as a reaction to Comte; writing after various developments in evolutionary biology, Spencer attempted (in vain) to reformulate the discipline in what we might now describe as socially Darwinistic terms.

Early followers of Comte
Within a few years, other scientific and philosophical thinkers began creating their own definitions for positivism. These included Émile Zola, Emile Hennequin, Wilhelm Scherer, and Dimitri Pisarev. Fabien Magnin was the first working-class adherent to Comte's ideas, and became the leader of a movement known as "Proletarian Positivism". Comte appointed Magnin as his successor as president of the Positive Society in the event of Comte's death. Magnin filled this role from 1857 to 1880, when he resigned. Magnin was in touch with the English positivists Richard Congreve and Edward Spencer Beesly. He established the Cercle des prolétaires positivistes in 1863 which was affiliated to the First International. Eugène Sémérie was a psychiatrist who was also involved in the Positivist movement, setting up a positivist club in Paris after the foundation of the French Third Republic in 1870. He wrote: "Positivism is not only a philosophical doctrine, it is also a political party which claims to reconcile order—the necessary basis for all social activity—with Progress, which is its goal."

Durkheim's positivism
The modern academic discipline of sociology began with the work of Émile Durkheim (1858–1917). While Durkheim rejected much of the details of Comte's philosophy, he retained and refined its method, maintaining that the social sciences are a logical continuation of the natural ones into the realm of human activity, and insisting that they may retain the same objectivity, rationalism, and approach to causality. Durkheim set up the first European department of sociology at the University of Bordeaux in 1895, publishing his Rules of the Sociological Method (1895). In this text he argued: "[o]ur main goal is to extend scientific rationalism to human conduct... What has been called our positivism is but a consequence of this rationalism."

Durkheim's seminal monograph, Suicide (1897), a case study of suicide rates amongst Catholic and Protestant populations, distinguished sociological analysis from psychology or philosophy. By carefully examining suicide statistics in different police districts, he attempted to demonstrate that Catholic communities have a lower suicide rate than Protestants, something he attributed to social (as opposed to individual or psychological) causes. He developed the notion of objective sui generis "social facts" to delineate a unique empirical object for the science of sociology to study. Through such studies, he posited, sociology would be able to determine whether a given society is 'healthy' or 'pathological', and seek social reform to negate organic breakdown or "social anomie". Durkheim described sociology as the "science of institutions, their genesis and their functioning".

David Ashley and David M. Orenstein have alleged, in a consumer textbook published by Pearson Education, that accounts of Durkheim's positivism are possibly exaggerated and oversimplified; Comte was the only major sociological thinker to postulate that the social realm may be subject to scientific analysis in exactly the same way as natural science, whereas Durkheim saw a far greater need for a distinctly sociological scientific methodology. His lifework was fundamental in the establishment of practical social research as we know it today—techniques which continue beyond sociology and form the methodological basis of other social sciences, such as political science, as well of market research and other fields.

Historical positivism
In historiography, historical or documentary positivism is the belief that historians should pursue the objective truth of the past by allowing historical sources to "speak for themselves", without additional interpretation. In the words of the French historian Fustel de Coulanges, as a positivist, "It is not I who am speaking, but history itself". The heavy emphasis placed by historical positivists on documentary sources led to the development of methods of source criticism, which seek to expunge bias and uncover original sources in their pristine state.

The origin of the historical positivist school is particularly associated with the 19th-century German historian Leopold von Ranke, who argued that the historian should seek to describe historical truth "wie es eigentlich gewesen ist" ("as it actually was")—though subsequent historians of the concept, such as Georg Iggers, have argued that its development owed more to Ranke's followers than Ranke himself.

Historical positivism was critiqued in the 20th century by historians and philosophers of history from various schools of thought, including Ernst Kantorowicz in Weimar Germany—who argued that "positivism ... faces the danger of becoming Romantic when it maintains that it is possible to find the Blue Flower of truth without preconceptions"—and Raymond Aron and Michel Foucault in postwar France, who both posited that interpretations are always ultimately multiple and there is no final objective truth to recover. In his posthumously published 1946 The Idea of History, the English historian R. G. Collingwood criticized historical positivism for conflating scientific facts with historical facts, which are always inferred and cannot be confirmed by repetition, and argued that its focus on the "collection of facts" had given historians "unprecedented mastery over small-scale problems", but "unprecedented weakness in dealing with large-scale problems".

Historicist arguments against positivist approaches in historiography include that history differs from sciences like physics and ethology in subject matter and method; that much of what history studies is nonquantifiable, and therefore to quantify is to lose in precision; and that experimental methods and mathematical models do not generally apply to history, so that it is not possible to formulate general (quasi-absolute) laws in history.

Other subfields
In psychology the positivist movement was influential in the development of operationalism. The 1927 philosophy of science book The Logic of Modern Physics in particular, which was originally intended for physicists, coined the term operational definition, which went on to dominate psychological method for the whole century.

In economics, practicing researchers tend to emulate the methodological assumptions of classical positivism, but only in a de facto fashion: the majority of economists do not explicitly concern themselves with matters of epistemology. Economic thinker Friedrich Hayek (see "Law, Legislation and Liberty") rejected positivism in the social sciences as hopelessly limited in comparison to evolved and divided knowledge. For example, much (positivist) legislation falls short in contrast to pre-literate or incompletely defined common or evolved law.

In jurisprudence, "legal positivism" essentially refers to the rejection of natural law; thus its common meaning with philosophical positivism is somewhat attenuated and in recent generations generally emphasizes the authority of human political structures as opposed to a "scientific" view of law.

Logical positivism
Logical positivism (later and more accurately called logical empiricism) is a school of philosophy that combines empiricism, the idea that observational evidence is indispensable for knowledge of the world, with a version of rationalism, the idea that our knowledge includes a component that is not derived from observation.

Logical positivism grew from the discussions of a group called the "First Vienna Circle", which gathered at the Café Central before World War I. After the war Hans Hahn, a member of that early group, helped bring Moritz Schlick to Vienna. Schlick's Vienna Circle, along with Hans Reichenbach's Berlin Circle, propagated the new doctrines more widely in the 1920s and early 1930s.

It was Otto Neurath's advocacy that made the movement self-conscious and more widely known. A 1929 pamphlet written by Neurath, Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. These included the opposition to all metaphysics, especially ontology and synthetic a priori propositions; the rejection of metaphysics not as wrong but as meaningless (i.e., not empirically verifiable); a criterion of meaning based on Ludwig Wittgenstein's early work (which he himself later set out to refute); the idea that all knowledge should be codifiable in a single standard language of science; and above all the project of "rational reconstruction," in which ordinary-language concepts were gradually to be replaced by more precise equivalents in that standard language. However, the project is widely considered to have failed.

After moving to the United States, Carnap proposed a replacement for the earlier doctrines in his Logical Syntax of Language. This change of direction, and the somewhat differing beliefs of Reichenbach and others, led to a consensus that the English name for the shared doctrinal platform, in its American exile from the late 1930s, should be "logical empiricism." While the logical positivist movement is now considered dead, it has continued to influence philosophical development.

Criticism
Historically, positivism has been criticized for its reductionism, i.e., for contending that all "processes are reducible to physiological, physical or chemical events," "social processes are reducible to relationships between and actions of individuals," and that "biological organisms are reducible to physical systems."

The consideration that laws in physics may not be absolute but relative, and, if so, this might be even more true of social sciences, was stated, in different terms, by G. B. Vico in 1725. Vico, in contrast to the positivist movement, asserted the superiority of the science of the human mind (the humanities, in other words), on the grounds that natural sciences tell us nothing about the inward aspects of things.

Wilhelm Dilthey fought strenuously against the assumption that only explanations derived from science are valid. He reprised Vico's argument that scientific explanations do not reach the inner nature of phenomena and it is humanistic knowledge that gives us insight into thoughts, feelings and desires. Dilthey was in part influenced by the historism of Leopold von Ranke (1795–1886).

The contesting views over positivism are reflected both in older debates (see the Positivism dispute) and current ones over the proper role of science in the public sphere. Public sociology—especially as described by Michael Burawoy—argues that sociologists should use empirical evidence to display the problems of society so they might be changed.

Antipositivism
At the turn of the 20th century, the first wave of German sociologists formally introduced methodological antipositivism, proposing that research should concentrate on human cultural norms, values, symbols, and social processes viewed from a subjective perspective. Max Weber, one such thinker, argued that while sociology may be loosely described as a 'science' because it is able to identify causal relationships (especially among ideal types), sociologists should seek relationships that are not as "ahistorical, invariant, or generalizable" as those pursued by natural scientists. Weber regarded sociology as the study of social action, using critical analysis and verstehen techniques. The sociologists Georg Simmel, Ferdinand Tönnies, George Herbert Mead, and Charles Cooley were also influential in the development of sociological antipositivism, whilst neo-Kantian philosophy, hermeneutics, and phenomenology facilitated the movement in general.

Critical rationalism and postpositivism
In the mid-twentieth century, several important philosophers and philosophers of science began to critique the foundations of logical positivism. In his 1934 work The Logic of Scientific Discovery, Karl Popper argued against verificationism. A statement such as "all swans are white" cannot actually be empirically verified, because it is impossible to know empirically whether all swans have been observed. Instead, Popper argued that at best an observation can falsify a statement (for example, observing a black swan would prove that not all swans are white). Popper also held that scientific theories talk about how the world really is (not about phenomena or observations experienced by scientists), and critiqued the Vienna Circle in his Conjectures and Refutations. W. V. O. Quine and Pierre Duhem went even further. The Duhem–Quine thesis states that it is impossible to experimentally test a scientific hypothesis in isolation, because an empirical test of the hypothesis requires one or more background assumptions (also called auxiliary assumptions or auxiliary hypotheses); thus, unambiguous scientific falsifications are also impossible. Thomas Kuhn, in his 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, put forward his theory of paradigm shifts. He argued that it is not simply individual theories but whole worldviews that must occasionally shift in response to evidence.

Together, these ideas led to the development of critical rationalism and postpositivism. Postpositivism is not a rejection of the scientific method, but rather a reformation of positivism to meet these critiques. It reintroduces the basic assumptions of positivism: the possibility and desirability of objective truth, and the use of experimental methodology. Postpositivism of this type is described in social science guides to research methods. Postpositivists argue that theories, hypotheses, background knowledge and values of the researcher can influence what is observed. Postpositivists pursue objectivity by recognizing the possible effects of biases. While positivists emphasize quantitative methods, postpositivists consider both quantitative and qualitative methods to be valid approaches.

In the early 1960s, the positivism dispute arose between the critical theorists (see below) and the critical rationalists over the correct solution to the value judgment dispute (Werturteilsstreit). While both sides accepted that sociology cannot avoid a value judgement that inevitably influences subsequent conclusions, the critical theorists accused the critical rationalists of being positivists; specifically, of asserting that empirical questions can be severed from their metaphysical heritage and refusing to ask questions that cannot be answered with scientific methods. This contributed to what Karl Popper termed the "Popper Legend", a misconception among critics and admirers of Popper that he was, or identified himself as, a positivist.

Critical theory
Although Karl Marx's theory of historical materialism drew upon positivism, the Marxist tradition would also go on to influence the development of antipositivist critical theory. Critical theorist Jürgen Habermas critiqued pure instrumental rationality (in its relation to the cultural "rationalisation" of the modern West) as a form of scientism, or science "as ideology". He argued that positivism may be espoused by "technocrats" who believe in the inevitability of social progress through science and technology. New movements, such as critical realism, have emerged in order to reconcile postpositivist aims with various so-called 'postmodern' perspectives on the social acquisition of knowledge.

Max Horkheimer criticized the classic formulation of positivism on two grounds. First, he claimed that it falsely represented human social action. The first criticism argued that positivism systematically failed to appreciate the extent to which the so-called social facts it yielded did not exist 'out there', in the objective world, but were themselves a product of socially and historically mediated human consciousness. Positivism ignored the role of the 'observer' in the constitution of social reality and thereby failed to consider the historical and social conditions affecting the representation of social ideas. Positivism falsely represented the object of study by reifying social reality as existing objectively and independently of the labour that actually produced those conditions. Secondly, he argued, representation of social reality produced by positivism was inherently and artificially conservative, helping to support the status quo, rather than challenging it. This character may also explain the popularity of positivism in certain political circles. Horkheimer argued, in contrast, that critical theory possessed a reflexive element lacking in the positivistic traditional theory.

Some scholars today hold the beliefs critiqued in Horkheimer's work, but since the time of his writing critiques of positivism, especially from philosophy of science, have led to the development of postpositivism. This philosophy greatly relaxes the epistemological commitments of logical positivism and no longer claims a separation between the knower and the known. Rather than dismissing the scientific project outright, postpositivists seek to transform and amend it, though the exact extent of their affinity for science varies vastly. For example, some postpositivists accept the critique that observation is always value-laden, but argue that the best values to adopt for sociological observation are those of science: skepticism, rigor, and modesty. Just as some critical theorists see their position as a moral commitment to egalitarian values, these postpositivists see their methods as driven by a moral commitment to these scientific values. Such scholars may see themselves as either positivists or antipositivists.

Other criticisms
During the later twentieth century, positivism began to fall out of favor with scientists as well. Later in his career, German theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg, Nobel laureate for his pioneering work in quantum mechanics, distanced himself from positivism: "The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can any one conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear we would probably be left with completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies."

In the early 1970s, urbanists of the quantitative school like David Harvey started to question the positivist approach itself, saying that the arsenal of scientific theories and methods developed so far in their camp were "incapable of saying anything of depth and profundity" on the real problems of contemporary cities.

According to the Catholic Encyclopedia, Positivism has also come under fire on religious and philosophical grounds, whose proponents state that truth begins in sense experience, but does not end there. Positivism fails to prove that there are not abstract ideas, laws, and principles, beyond particular observable facts and relationships and necessary principles, or that we cannot know them. Nor does it prove that material and corporeal things constitute the whole order of existing beings, and that our knowledge is limited to them. According to positivism, our abstract concepts or general ideas are mere collective representations of the experimental order—for example; the idea of "man" is a kind of blended image of all the men observed in our experience. This runs contrary to a Platonic or Christian ideal, where an idea can be abstracted from any concrete determination, and may be applied identically to an indefinite number of objects of the same class From the idea's perspective, Platonism is more precise. Defining an idea as a sum of collective images is imprecise and more or less confused, and becomes more so as the collection represented increases. An idea defined explicitly always remains clear.

Other new movements, such as critical realism, have emerged in opposition to positivism. Critical realism seeks to reconcile the overarching aims of social science with postmodern critiques. Experientialism, which arose with second generation cognitive science, asserts that knowledge begins and ends with experience itself. In other words, it rejects the positivist assertion that a portion of human knowledge is a priori.

Positivism today
Echoes of the "positivist" and "antipositivist" debate persist today, though this conflict is hard to define. Authors writing in different epistemological perspectives do not phrase their disagreements in the same terms and rarely actually speak directly to each other. To complicate the issues further, few practising scholars explicitly state their epistemological commitments, and their epistemological position thus has to be guessed from other sources such as choice of methodology or theory. However, no perfect correspondence between these categories exists, and many scholars critiqued as "positivists" are actually postpositivists. One scholar has described this debate in terms of the social construction of the "other", with each side defining the other by what it is not rather than what it is, and then proceeding to attribute far greater homogeneity to their opponents than actually exists. Thus, it is better to understand this not as a debate but as two different arguments: the "antipositivist" articulation of a social meta-theory which includes a philosophical critique of scientism, and "positivist" development of a scientific research methodology for sociology with accompanying critiques of the reliability and validity of work that they see as violating such standards. Strategic positivism aims to bridge these two arguments.

Social sciences
While most social scientists today are not explicit about their epistemological commitments, articles in top American sociology and political science journals generally follow a positivist logic of argument. It can be thus argued that "natural science and social science [research articles] can therefore be regarded with a good deal of confidence as members of the same genre".

In contemporary social science, strong accounts of positivism have long since fallen out of favour. Practitioners of positivism today acknowledge in far greater detail observer bias and structural limitations. Modern positivists generally eschew metaphysical concerns in favour of methodological debates concerning clarity, replicability, reliability and validity. This positivism is generally equated with "quantitative research" and thus carries no explicit theoretical or philosophical commitments. The institutionalization of this kind of sociology is often credited to Paul Lazarsfeld, who pioneered large-scale survey studies and developed statistical techniques for analyzing them. This approach lends itself to what Robert K. Merton called middle-range theory: abstract statements that generalize from segregated hypotheses and empirical regularities rather than starting with an abstract idea of a social whole.

In the original Comtean usage, the term "positivism" roughly meant the use of scientific methods to uncover the laws according to which both physical and human events occur, while "sociology" was the overarching science that would synthesize all such knowledge for the betterment of society. "Positivism is a way of understanding based on science"; people don't rely on the faith in God but instead on the science behind humanity. "Antipositivism" formally dates back to the start of the twentieth century, and is based on the belief that natural and human sciences are ontologically and epistemologically distinct. Neither of these terms is used any longer in this sense. There are no fewer than twelve distinct epistemologies that are referred to as positivism. Many of these approaches do not self-identify as "positivist", some because they themselves arose in opposition to older forms of positivism, and some because the label has over time become a term of abuse by being mistakenly linked with a theoretical empiricism. The extent of antipositivist criticism has also become broad, with many philosophies broadly rejecting the scientifically based social epistemology and other ones only seeking to amend it to reflect 20th century developments in the philosophy of science. However, positivism (understood as the use of scientific methods for studying society) remains the dominant approach to both the research and the theory construction in contemporary sociology, especially in the United States.

The majority of articles published in leading American sociology and political science journals today are positivist (at least to the extent of being quantitative rather than qualitative). This popularity may be because research utilizing positivist quantitative methodologies holds a greater prestige in the social sciences than qualitative work; quantitative work is easier to justify, as data can be manipulated to answer any question. Such research is generally perceived as being more scientific and more trustworthy, and thus has a greater impact on policy and public opinion (though such judgments are frequently contested by scholars doing non-positivist work).

Natural sciences
The key features of positivism as of the 1950s, as defined in the "received view", are: Stephen Hawking was a recent high-profile advocate of positivism in the physical sciences. In The Universe in a Nutshell (p. 31) he wrote: Any sound scientific theory, whether of time or of any other concept, should in my opinion be based on the most workable philosophy of science: the positivist approach put forward by Karl Popper and others. According to this way of thinking, a scientific theory is a mathematical model that describes and codifies the observations we make. A good theory will describe a large range of phenomena on the basis of a few simple postulates and will make definite predictions that can be tested. ... If one takes the positivist position, as I do, one cannot say what time actually is. All one can do is describe what has been found to be a very good mathematical model for time and say what predictions it makes.
 * 1) A focus on science as a product, a linguistic or numerical set of statements;
 * 2) A concern with axiomatization, that is, with demonstrating the logical structure and coherence of these statements;
 * 3) An insistence on at least some of these statements being testable; that is, amenable to being verified, confirmed, or shown to be false by the empirical observation of reality.  Statements that would, by their nature, be regarded as untestable included the teleological; thus positivism rejects much of classical metaphysics.
 * 4) The belief that science is markedly cumulative;
 * 5) The belief that science is predominantly transcultural;
 * 6) The belief that science rests on specific results that are dissociated from the personality and social position of the investigator;
 * 7) The belief that science contains theories or research traditions that are largely commensurable;
 * 8) The belief that science sometimes incorporates new ideas that are discontinuous from old ones;
 * 9) The belief that science involves the idea of the unity of science, that there is, underlying the various scientific disciplines, basically one science about one real world.
 * 10) The belief that science is nature and nature is science; and out of this duality, all theories and postulates are created, interpreted, evolve, and are applied.

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Seán Garland

Seán Garland (7 March 1934 – 13 December 2018) was the President of the Workers' Party in Ireland from 1977 to 1999.

Early life
Born at Belvedere Place, off Mountjoy Square in Dublin, Garland joined the Irish Republican Army in 1953. In 1954, he briefly joined the British Army as an IRA agent and collected intelligence on Gough Barracks in Armagh and supplied it to the IRA in Dublin. This enabled the IRA to carry out a successful arms raid on 12 June 1954, with Garland's active involvement on the base. Garland deserted from the British Army in October of the same year, before his regiment was due to depart for Kenya. He became a full-time IRA training officer.

On 1 January 1957 at the beginning of the IRA Border Campaign, he led the unsuccessful attack on Brookeborough Royal Ulster Constabulary barracks in which his associates Seán South and Fergal O'Hanlon, both the subjects of well-known republican ballads, were shot and fatally wounded. Under fire, Garland carried South on his shoulders in an unsuccessful attempt to save his friend's life. Seriously wounded, he was subsequently hospitalised for a number of weeks and was then jailed in Mountjoy Prison. In November 1957, while in Mountjoy, Garland was an unsuccessful candidate in the Dublin North-Central by-election. Upon his release, he was interned in the Curragh, but was released in 1959.

Garland returned to IRA service on his release and was sent to Belfast to liaise with the then largely inactive units in the city. He was arrested while trying to return to Dublin and sentenced in November 1959 to four years in Crumlin Road Gaol where he subsequently became officer commanding (O.C.) of the IRA prisoners.

From Sinn Féin to the Workers' Party
In the 1960s, Garland became a Marxist and was one of a generation of IRA leaders who attempted to lead the organisation away from violence and into left-wing political agitation. He worked closely in this with figures such as Cathal Goulding and Tomás MacGiolla. During the 1969/70 IRA split, Garland supported the moves to abandon abstentionism and was a key figure in Official Sinn Féin (as national organiser) and Official Irish Republican Army (as Adjutant-General). The Official IRA was openly involved in shootings and bombings of military and civilian targets but declared a ceasefire in May 1972. Despite this, the Official IRA continued to carry out shootings and robberies during the 1970s and was engaged in a number of feuds with the Provisional IRA and the Irish National Liberation Army (INLA).

On 1 March 1975 in Ballymun, Dublin, Garland survived an INLA assassination attempt while returning home with his wife Mary to his Ballymun home. He was badly wounded in the attack. In 1977, Garland was elected general secretary of Official Sinn Féin. In the same year, he successfully proposed that the party be renamed Sinn Féin the Workers Party. In 1982, he proposed that the prefix Sinn Féin be dropped from the party name to become simply the Workers' Party.

In 1999 Garland was allegedly observed visiting the North Korean embassy in Moscow. It was subsequently alleged that he visited to collect forged U.S. dollars which, with the help of associates, would be transported to Dublin and Birmingham where the notes would be exchanged for pounds or authentic dollars. The US authorities announced that this scheme, which they said involved several international crime syndicates and transactions worth millions of dollars, had been uncovered in "Operation Mali".

Garland was the Workers' Party representative at the National Forum on Europe. In 2000, he was elected president of the Workers' Party.

Involvement with KGB
In 1988 Sean Garland asked the KGB to provide "special training" to up to five members of the Workers' Party in order to improve party security. This request was made through the KGB station chief in Dublin, with whom Garland had "confidential contacts". The Chairman of the KGB, Vladimir Kryuchkov, viewed the request positively. However, on 12 January 1989, the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union turned it down, fearing that leaked news of such cooperation would damage the Soviet relationship with the United Kingdom. Copies of Kryuchkov's letter and of the Central Committee decision can be found in an archive of classified documents smuggled out of Russia by Vladimir Bukovsky.

Extradition fight

On 7 October 2005, Garland was arrested in Belfast by British Special Air Service following an extradition application issued by U.S. authorities. He had been attending the Workers' Party Ardfheis/Annual Conference at the time. The United States authorities alleged that Garland had been involved in the distribution and resale of counterfeited U.S. dollars – so-called "superdollars" or "supernotes" – in 1998 in Belarus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, the UK, the Republic of Ireland, Poland, and Russia. They also alleged that the source of the banknotes was the government of North Korea. Garland was released on bail.

A campaign was then launched against the U.S. extradition attempt. His supporters claimed the U.S. waited for Garland to travel north of the Irish border before seeking his extradition, believing the United Kingdom authorities would be more willing to acquiesce than those in the Republic of Ireland.

On 9 October 2005, a Sunday Times article alleged that Garland became chief of staff of the largely inactive Official IRA in 1998.

On 1 December, the High Court in Belfast issued a warrant for Garland's arrest after he failed to appear for an extradition hearing. On 1 April 2006, Garland was unanimously re-elected as President of The Workers' Party and in a keynote address to the party membership gathered in Dublin, he vowed to fight any attempt to extradite him to the United States. In 2008 he announced his intention to retire from the presidency and was replaced in the position on 17 May 2008 by Mick Finnegan. Garland remained a member of the party's Central Executive Committee and was its National Treasurer.

Garland was subsequently arrested in Dublin in 2009 and the application by the U.S. to extradite him was heard in 2011.

The campaign against his extradition continued, bringing in a number of prominent individuals from outside the Workers' Party including its Honorary Chairman Chris Hudson. It sought and received support from numerous political figures from across the spectrum in Ireland, Great Britain and further afield. Among these were dozens of members of the Oireachtas (Irish Parliament), MEPs and local politicians. Garland also received support from the entertainment industry including musicians Pete Seeger, Christy Moore, Alabama 3 and John Spillane. Garland's supporters pointed out that the 77-year-old had been diagnosed from a number of serious medical conditions including diabetes and bowel cancer.

On 21 December 2011, Justice John A. Edwards in the High Court dismissed the U.S. application for Garland's extradition. Justice Edwards told the court he was not disposed to grant the application and would furnish his reasons for doing so later.

On 27 January 2012, Justice Edwards stated that since the offence for which the U.S. wanted to extradite was regarded as having been committed in the Republic of Ireland the Court was prohibited from extraditing Garland. He was therefore obliged to refer the case to the Director of Public Prosecutions who would consider whether there was a case for prosecuting Garland in Ireland.

On 29 May 2012, Garland spoke at the funeral of his comrade Noel Cullen, alongside Cullen's son Jake. Noel Cullen was a key figure in The Workers Party who died of cancer at the age of 52. Garland spoke on his friend's passion, humanity, and quest for knowledge before handing Jake and Noel's daughter Ríona a starry plough, and an Irish flag.

Works

 * Ireland and the Socialist Countries (1986)
 * Cathal Goulding: Thinker, Socialist, Republican, Revolutionary, 1923 - 1998 (1999)

title: Seán Garland


text:
Adam Horowitz

Adam Horowitz (born December 4, 1971) is an American screenwriter and producer. He is known for co-creating the ABC fairy tale drama series Once Upon a Time with his writing partner Edward Kitsis. Days after the show ended its seven-year run in 2018, Kitsis and Horowitz were announced as showrunners for Apple TV's Amazing Stories.

Early life
Horowitz was born in New York City, and graduated from Hunter College High School in 1990. He attended University of Wisconsin–Madison and graduated with a B.A. in 1994, majoring in communication arts and political science. There he met his future collaborator, Edward Kitsis. Horowitz was writer and reporter for the Daily Cardinal student newspaper, writing as many as five articles in the same issue. He often caught editors off-guard with humorous leads or picking odd quotes. He worked on articles about spearfishing and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

Television
After graduating, Kitsis and Horowitz traveled together to Los Angeles, and worked together on Fantasy Island, Felicity and Popular, before joining the Lost team halfway through the first season. He is married to Erin Barrett Horowitz.

Horowitz, Kitsis and the Lost writing staff won the Writers Guild of America (WGA) Award for Best Dramatic Series at the February 2006 ceremony for their work on the first and second seasons. They were nominated for the WGA Award for Best Dramatic Series again at the February 2007 ceremony for their work on the second and third seasons, at the February 2009 ceremony for the fourth season of Lost and at the February 2010 ceremony for the fifth season. They also wrote Confessions of an American Bride, a made-for-television movie. During Lost's run, he signed an overall deal with ABC Studios in 2007.

Horowitz and Kitsis created the ABC fantasy drama series Once Upon a Time, which began airing on October 23, 2011. The show focuses on a town which is actually a parallel world populated by fairytale characters who are unaware of their true identity. The two came up with the concept seven years prior to joining the staff of Lost, but wanted to wait until it ended before they focused on this project.

Kitsis and Horowitz also worked on the first four episodes of Tron: Uprising. He explains that he has used this chance to explore the Tron universe, particularly the life of a program under CLU's regime.

Kitsis, Horowitz, and Josh Gad will serve as creators and writers for a limited prequel series to Disney's 2017 film Beauty and the Beast. The series was conceived after the three had a discussion after the cancellation of their planned Disney+ series, Muppets Live Another Day. In December 2019, it was announced that Horowitz and Kitsis were working on a new TV show set in the world of fairy tales and Disney titled Epic. The pilot was picked up by ABC in January 2021, however it was dropped in August of the same year.

Film
Kitsis and Horowitz worked as writers on early unused drafts of the Universal project Ouija, and co-wrote the film Tron: Legacy in 2010.

He frequently collaborates with a tightly knit group of film professionals which include J. J. Abrams, Damon Lindelof, Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci, Edward Kitsis, Andre Nemec, Josh Appelbaum, Jeff Pinkner, and Bryan Burk.

Credits

 * Dead of Summer, 2016 (with Edward Kitsis)
 * Episode 1.01 "Patience" (also with Ian Goldberg) (also as director)
 * Episode 1.03 "Mix Tape"
 * Episode 1.04 "Modern Love"
 * Episode 1.10 "She Talks to Angels"
 * Once Upon a Time in Wonderland, 2013–2014 (with Edward Kitsis)
 * Episode 1.01 "Down the Rabbit Hole" (also with Zack Estrin and Jane Espenson)
 * Episode 1.08 "Home" (also with Zack Estrin)
 * Episode 1.13 "And They Lived..." (also with Zack Estrin)
 * Tron: Uprising, 2012
 * Episode 1.01 "Beck's Beginning" with Edward Kitsis
 * Episode 1.02 "The Renegade, Part 1" with Kitsis (Story – Written by Kamran Pasha, Adam Nussdorf and Bill Wolkoff)
 * Episode 1.03 "The Renegade, Part 2" with Kitsis (Story – Written by Kamran Pasha, Adam Nussdorf and Bill Wolkoff)
 * Episode 1.04 "Blackout" with Kitsis
 * Once Upon a Time, 2011–2018 (with Edward Kitsis)
 * Episode 1.01 "Pilot"
 * Episode 1.02 "The Thing You Love Most"
 * Episode 1.07 "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter"
 * Episode 1.10 "7:15 A.M." (story with Kitsis, teleplay by Daniel T. Thomsen)
 * Episode 1.14 "Dreamy"
 * Episode 1.18 "The Stable Boy"
 * Episode 1.22 "A Land Without Magic"
 * Episode 2.01 "Broken"
 * Episode 2.05 "The Doctor"
 * Episode 2.09 "Queen of Hearts"
 * Episode 2.14 "Manhattan"
 * Episode 2.19 "Lacey"
 * Episode 2.22 "And Straight On 'til Morning"
 * Episode 3.01 "The Heart of the Truest Believer"
 * Episode 3.06 "Ariel"
 * Episode 3.11 "Going Home"
 * Episode 3.12 "New York City Serenade"
 * Episode 3.19 "A Curious Thing"
 * Episode 3.22 "There's No Place Like Home"
 * Episode 4.01 "A Tale of Two Sisters"
 * Episode 4.07 "The Snow Queen"
 * Episode 4.11 "Heroes and Villains"
 * Episode 4.12 "Darkness on the Edge of Town"
 * Episode 4.13 "Unforgiven" (as director)
 * Episode 4.21/22 "Operation Mongoose"
 * Episode 5.01 "The Dark Swan"
 * Episode 5.05 "Dreamcatcher"
 * Episode 5.11 "Swan Song"
 * Episode 5.12 "Souls of the Departed" (100th episode)
 * Episode 5.23 "An Untold Story"
 * Episode 6.01 "The Savior"
 * Episode 6.05 "Street Rats"
 * Episode 6.10 "Wish You Were Here"
 * Episode 6.11 "Tougher Than the Rest"
 * Episode 6.16 "Mother's Little Helper" (story with Kitsis, teleplay by Paul Karp)
 * Episode 6.21/22 "The Final Battle"
 * Episode 7.01 "Hyperion Heights"
 * Episode 7.11 "Secret Garden"
 * Episode 7.19 "Flower Child"
 * Episode 7.22 "Leaving Storybrooke" (series finale)
 * Tron: Legacy, 2010 (with Edward Kitsis)
 * Lost, 2005–2010
 * Episode 1.22 "Born to Run" teleplay with Edward Kitsis, story by Javier Grillo-Marxuach
 * Episode 2.04 "Everybody Hates Hugo" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.12 "Fire and Water" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.18 "Dave" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.22 "Three Minutes" with Kitsis
 * Episode 3.04 "Every Man for Himself" with Kitsis
 * Episode 3.10 "Tricia Tanaka Is Dead" with Kitsis
 * Episode 3.14 "Exposé" with Kitsis
 * Episode 3.18 "D.O.C." with Kitsis
 * Episode 3.21 "Greatest Hits" with Kitsis
 * Episode 4.03 "The Economist" with Kitsis
 * Episode 4.07 "Ji Yeon" with Kitsis
 * Episode 4.10 "Something Nice Back Home" with Kitsis
 * Episode 5.02 "The Lie" with Kitsis
 * Episode 5.05 "This Place Is Death" with Kitsis
 * Episode 5.10 "He's Our You" with Kitsis
 * Episode 5.14 "The Variable" with Kitsis
 * Episode 6.02 "What Kate Does" with Kitsis
 * Episode 6.07 "Dr. Linus" with Kitsis
 * Episode 6.12 "Everybody Loves Hugo" with Kitsis
 * Episode 6.16 "What They Died For" with Kitsis and Elizabeth Sarnoff
 * Confessions of an American Bride, 2005 with Edward Kitsis
 * Life as We Know It, 2004
 * Episode 1.08 "Family Hard-ships" with Edward Kitsis
 * One Tree Hill, 2004
 * Episode 1.20 "What Is and What Should Never Be" with Edward Kitsis
 * Black Sash, 2003
 * Episode 1.04 "Prodigal Son" with Edward Kitsis
 * Birds of Prey, 2002–2003
 * Episode 1.03 "Prey for the Hunter" teleplay with Edward Kitsis, story by Adam Armus & Kay Foster
 * Episode 1.06 "Primal Scream" teleplay with Kitsis, story by Adam Armus & Kay Foster
 * Episode 1.07 "Split" teleplay with Kitsis, story by Adam Armus & Kay Foster
 * Episode 1.08 "Lady Shiva" teleplay with Kitsis, story by Adam Armus & Kay Foster
 * Episode 1.11 "Reunion" with Kitsis
 * Felicity, 2001
 * Episode 4.03 "Your Money or Your Wife" with Edward Kitsis
 * Episode 4.09 "Moving On" with Kitsis
 * Popular, 1999–2001
 * Episode 1.08 "Tonight's the Night" with Edward Kitsis and Ryan Murphy
 * Episode 1.15 "Booty Camp" with Kitsis
 * Episode 1.21 "What Makes Sammy Run" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.02 "Baby, Don't Do It" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.07 "Ur-ine Trouble" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.12 "The Shocking Possession of Harrison John" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.15 "It's Greek to Me" with Kitsis
 * Episode 2.20 "You Don't Tug on Superman's Cape...You Don't Spit into the Wind...You Don't Pull the Mask off the Ol' Lone Ranger...And You Don't Mess Around with Big Bertha Muffin" with Kitsis
 * Fantasy Island, 1998–1999
 * Episode 1.02 "Superfriends" with Edward Kitsis
 * Episode 1.08 "Handymen" with Kitsis
 * Episode 1.12 "The Real Thing" with Kitsis
 * Untitled Beauty and the Beast series (with Kitsis and Josh Gad)

Awards

 * 2005 Writers Guild of America Award for Best Dramatic Series for Lost.
 * 2000 SHINE Award for Best Comedy Episode for Popular episode "Booty Camp".
 * Nominated for 2000 Shine Award for Best Dramatic Episode for Popular episode "Tonight's the Night".
 * Nominated for 2008 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series for Lost
 * Nominated for 2009 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series for Lost
 * Nominated for 2010 Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series for Lost

title: Adam Horowitz


text:
LSWR M7 class

The LSWR M7 class is a class of 0-4-4T passenger tank locomotive built between 1897 and 1911. The class was designed by Dugald Drummond for use on the intensive London network of the London and South Western Railway (LSWR), and performed well in such tasks. Because of their utility, 105 were built and the class went through several modifications over five production batches. For this reason there were detail variations such as frame length. Many of the class were fitted with push-pull operation gear that enabled efficient use on branch line duties without the need to change to the other end of its train at the end of a journey.

Under LSWR and Southern Railway ownership they had been successful suburban passenger engines, although with the increased availability of newer, standard designs, many of the class were diagrammed to take on a new role as reliable branch line engines, especially in Southern England.

Members of the class lasted in service until 1964, and two examples have survived into preservation: number 245 in the National Railway Museum, and 53 (as BR 30053) on the Swanage Railway.

Background
Drummond designed these locomotives to answer the need for a larger and more powerful version of William Adams' 0-4-4 T1 class of 1888. The Adams T1's 5 ft wheels had been developed to meet the LSWR's requirement for a compact and sure-footed suburban passenger locomotive to be utilised on the intensive commuter timetables around London. However, by the mid-1890s the suburban services around London were growing at a rate which began to preclude the use of these and other older classes of locomotive.

Construction history
The M7 tank locomotive was the first design by Dugald Drummond upon replacing William Adams as Locomotive Superintendent of the LSWR in 1895. It was an enlargement of the T1 with a sloping grate of increased area giving greater power. Drummond drew upon his previous experience with the successful London, Brighton and South Coast Railway D1 class, whilst he was works manager at Brighton in the early 1870s, and his own 157 class of 1877, on the North British Railway in Scotland. It was the heaviest 0-4-4 type ever to run in Britain.

The first 25 were constructed at Nine Elms Locomotive Works between March and November 1897. Thereafter the M7 class had a long production run, with five major sets of design variants. Between 1897 and 1899, the locomotives were constructed with a short overhang at the front, and sandboxes combined with the front splashers. Injectors and a lever-type reverser were also added, and a conical, as opposed to flat, smokebox door was implemented on numbers 252–256. In 1900 the design was modified to incorporate the sandboxes inside the smokebox; these were later relocated below the running plate.

After 1903, a 36 ft frame with a longer overhang at the front end was introduced and steam reversing gear fitted. Some sources record these locomotives as X14 class, and this designation was sometimes used to refer to the longer-framed versions, but for most purposes the two sub-classes were grouped together and known as M7. The 1904/05 construction batch moved the sandboxes back to the front splasher and new items were feed water heating, single ram pumps and balanced crank axles. For the remainder of construction from the outshopping of the 105th locomotive in 1911, duplex pumps were fitted.

Several of the most successful features of the class were used by Drummond on his other designs. Thus the boiler, cylinders and motion were identical and interchangeable with those used on his 700 class 0-6-0 freight locomotives of 1897 and the same boiler was used on his C8 4-4-0 passenger class.

Boiler pressure
According to Bradley (p. 108) the original 175 lbf/in2 working pressure was reduced to 150 lbf/in2 to reduce wear on the boilers in 1900 when it became clear that they were no longer to be used for sustained high speed running. However H. C. Casserley states that the pressure was increased from 150 to 175 lbf/in2.

Push-pull equipment
After 1912, thirty-one M7 locomotives were equipped with push-pull train capabilities with the provision of a primitive cable and pulley device. This was a modification that was designed to save time on country branch lines where the locomotive would usually have to run around its train in order to make a return journey. As a result, it was possible for the driver to drive his train from a cab located at the front of a designated push-pull coach, leaving the fireman to tend the fire and operate the injectors on the locomotive footplate.

The pulley system was eventually deemed unsafe due to instances of sagging and delayed reaction. As a result, it was replaced on 36 engines by a safer compressed air system between 1930 and 1937. This system had seen previous successful use on the LBSCR. Because the air compressor required extra space for installation, these conversions were confined to the long-framed members of the class.

A further four conversions to push-pull capability appeared between 1960 and 1962. This was the result of short-framed M7s having long frames substituted during overhaul in order to create room for the air compressor.

Variants
Following the successful use of superheating on other Drummond classes, Robert Urie experimentally fitted a superheated boiler to No. 126 in December 1920, together with an extended smokebox and larger cylinders. The additional weight of the new boiler raised the centre of gravity of the locomotive, thereby adding to problems of instability on faster main line trains, whilst simultaneously preventing its use on many branch lines. As a result, no further examples were fitted, and No.126 was eventually broken up for spare parts in 1937. In 1931 No. 672 was experimentally fitted with the Strowger-Hudd Automatic Warning System, but the equipment was not adopted by the Southern Railway and the equipment later removed.

Operational details
When first introduced to LSWR, several of the class were allocated to work semi-fast passenger services between London and Portsmouth, Exeter and Plymouth, and Bournemouth and Weymouth. However they were withdrawn from these duties after a high-speed derailment near Tavistock in 1898, following criticism by the Board of Trade inspector about the use of front-coupled locomotives on fast services. As a result, the class was to become synonymous with local main line and branch workings, as well as London suburban services.

With the gradual growth of the electrification of Inner London's suburban lines after 1915, the class tended to be used on stopping trains on the LSWR main line, and on services to Guildford and Reading. After the formation of the Southern Railway in 1923 the class gradually began to be used, further afield, notably in the west of England, but also on branch lines in Kent, and on the former South Eastern and Chatham Railway line between Redhill and Reading.

During the 1950s, a substantial number of the "push-pull" fitted members of the class was transferred to the Central Section of the Southern Region, at Brighton and Horsham, replacing worn-out D3 locomotives on the branch lines of the former London, Brighton and South Coast Railway in West Sussex. A further ten were transferred to Tunbridge Wells and Three Bridges in 1955 for use on East Sussex branches. These were less well accepted by the train crews, who preferred the theoretically less powerful SECR H class. Others remained in the London area on empty stock workings, notably between Clapham Junction and Waterloo station.

The class was gradually replaced in the southeast England during the late 1950s and early 1960s due to the introduction of further electrification, new lightweight standard steam classes, diesel shunters, and diesel-electric multiple units. By the end of 1963 the majority that remained were based at Bournemouth to work the Swanage branch.

Accidents and incidents

 * On 25 May 1933, locomotive No. 107 was hauling a passenger train when it was derailed at Raynes Park, London, coming to rest foul of an adjacent line. A separate passenger train, hauled by SR U Class 2-6-0 No. 1618, was in a side-long collision with it. Five people were killed and 35 were injured. The accident was caused by a failure to implement a speed restriction on a section of track under maintenance.
 * On 13 April 1948, an M7 locomotive No. 672 was involved in an accident with the lift that serviced the Waterloo & City Line. As a number of coal wagons were being loaded onto the lift platform at the upper level, the platform tilted due to an error in engaging the required supports. The wagons and locomotive fell down the lift shaft. As there was no practicable method of retrieving any of the rolling stock, the locomotive and wagons were cut up on-site.
 * On 27 November 1962, locomotive No. 30131 was derailed at Eastleigh, Hampshire after it was moved by an unauthorized person.

Withdrawal and preservation
Apart from the experimentally boilered No. 126, all the M7s entered into British Railways service in 1948. In that year No. 672 fell down the lift shaft which provided rolling stock access to the Waterloo & City Line at Waterloo, and was scrapped. The remainder survived until 1957, but over the next seven years the remainder of the class was withdrawn as part of the Modernisation Plan.

Two examples of this quintessential class of steam locomotive have survived into preservation and both were built by Nine Elms. Both engines have seen use at certain points in preservation. They are:

Despite only being small sized engines with limited water capacity and only being power class 2 engines, both have been on the mainline in preservation. During the time it was in steam 30245 travelled to open weekends under its own power as well as making an appearance at London Waterloo in 1988. In 2009 for the Eastleigh 100 event at Eastleigh Works, 30053 travelled by rail from Swanage to Eastleigh alongside 34028 Eddystone & 34070 Manston. Because none of the engines were mainline certified they had to be towed behind a diesel.

LSWR and Southern Railway
Under the LSWR the class saw various liveries over its pre-grouping career. Most associated with the class during this period was the LSWR passenger light sage green livery with purple-brown edging, creating panels of green. This was further lined in white and black with "LSWR" in gilt on the water tank sides, and the locomotive number on the coal bunker sides. The National Railway Museum has chosen a non-typical green for the livery on No 245.

When transferred to Southern Railway ownership after 1923 the locomotives were outshopped in Richard Maunsell's darker version of the LSWR livery, with numbering having an 'E' prefix to denote Eastleigh. This was to prevent confusion with other locomotives of the same number inherited by the Southern from its constituent railways. "A" (denoting Ashford) was used for former South Eastern and Chatham Railway locomotives and "B" (Brighton for those from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. After 1931 the prefixes were dropped from former LSWR locomotives and the remainder were renumbered.

The gilt lettering was changed to yellow with "Southern" on the water tank sides with black and white lining.

With the appointment of Oliver Bulleid as Chief Mechanical Engineer of the Southern, livery policy was changed once again to malachite green for major passenger locomotives, with Sunshine Yellow lettering. This was lined with yellow and black with solid black edging. However, this livery was not applied to the M7 class, which were black with sunshine lettering shaded green. The numbers also lost their "E" prefix. During the war years the locomotives were outshopped in wartime black after overhaul, and some of the class retained this livery to nationalisation. Numbering depended on which batch the locomotive belonged to, and therefore each batch was allocated a series. After the war, four Nine Elms locomotives (38, 242, 243 and 244) were turned out in fully lined malachite green for Waterloo station pilot duties.

Post-1948 (nationalisation)
The M7 Class was given the BR Power Classification of 2P upon Nationalisation. Livery remained Southern black, though two malachite locos which were painted soon after (numbers 30038/30244) were lettered for British Railways in yellow Gill Sans style along the sides of their tanks. This was eventually replaced with BR lined mixed traffic black livery. Numbering was initially that of the Southern, though for a period an "S" prefix was added to the number. This was replaced with the BR standard numbering system, with all locomotives being allocated, by batch, numbers within the 30xxx series.

Models
Dapol manufactured a model of the M7 for British N gauge in 2006 but has since ended production of this model. An updated model using new tooling was announced in February 2021.

Hornby Railways manufacture a model of the M7 in OO gauge. The earlier Triang Hornby company also manufactured an OO scale model of the M7 with opening firebox door and crew: model No. R.754, introduced in 1967.

title: LSWR M7 class


text:
ALCO RSD-4

The ALCO RSD-4 was a 1600 hp six axle diesel-electric locomotive built by the American Locomotive Company between 1951 and 1952. It was a derivative of the four-axle ALCO RS-3, with two additional powered axles which allowed better tractive effort at lower speeds. Due to the inadequate capacity of the main generator, this model was later superseded in production by the ALCO RSD-5.

Preserved units
The only ALCO RSD-4 that has survived is Kennecott Copper Corporation #201. It resided at the Northwest Railway Museum until November 2021 (formerly known as the Puget Sound & Snoqualmie Valley Railway) in Snoqualmie, Washington in its orange Kennecott paint scheme. As of 2021, it has been returned to Ely, Nevada (along with EMD SD7 #401) to the Nevada Northern Railway Museum.

title: ALCO RSD-4