tray life as it is, realist writers frequently dealt with social abuses and the sordid aspects of human behavior and social life. Literary realism evolved into naturalism when writers tried to demonstrate a casual relationship between human character and the social environment.Positivists viewed science as the highest achievement of the mind and sought to apply a strict empirical approach to the study of society. Auguste Comte, the father of positivism, called for a purely scientific approach to history and society: only through a proper understanding of the laws governing human affairs could society, which was in a state of intellectual anarchy, be rationally reorganized. Like others of his generation, he believed that scientific laws underlay human affairs and could be discovered through the methods of the empirical scientist.There were many isms during this time period, all of which accomplished different things....
