A trick to using malapropism is to ensure that the two words (the original and the substitute) sound similar enough for the reader to catch onto the intended switch and find humor in the result.
Positivism is a philosophical theory stating that positive knowledge is based on natural phenomena and their properties and relations. Thus, information derived from sensory experience, interpreted through reason and logic, forms the exclusive source of all authoritative knowledge.
Contemporary positivism 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.