  Mach is generally considered a ‘positivist’. However, this tells us little, as positivism is really a collection of traditions, connected often by misunderstandings as much as by actual intellectual agreement. Furthermore, the word today has come to mean something so far removed from its nineteenth century origins as to be practically harmful in understanding the how it was used in the nineteenth century. Outside of the social sciences (where it is alive and well), the word ‘positivism’ seems to be used mostly by post-modernists, deconstructionists, and the Frankfurt school as a word to represent that branch of the enlightenment tradition that failed; it has become the ‘other’ which we all know is wrong without having to know what it is. Comte was a Positivist. Mach, too, was a Positivist, but Mach probably has more in common with Husserl than Comte, and certainly more in common with James.