The Education of Alexander Williamson

The important biographical sources are Foster, Williamson (1905) Divers, Williamson (1907) Harris and Brock, From Giessen to Gower Street (1974) Paul, Williamson (1978) and Brock, Williamson (2004). 

Harris and Brock, From Giessen to Gower Street, 103. 

Comtean positivism was distinct from the late nineteenth-century positivism of Ernst Mach or that of the Vienna Circle logical positivists, for in Comte s work there were distinct realist impulses superadded to the dominating desire to extirpate metaphysics. Moreover, Comte actually had a healthy respect for the beneficial role of hypotheses in 

Quoted in ibid., 106. Williamson did not say, nor can it be inferred, to which research project he was referring. 

Quoted in Foster, Williamson, 611. Foster had access to letters written by Williamson and since destroyed his quotations from them fail to cite dates or addressees. 

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