Dataism

This is an interesting passage. The author is using “positivism” somewhat broadly—not necessarily in the strict sense of Auguste Comte, but as the modern belief that empirical investigation, science, technology, and rational administration can progressively improve society.

The question “what comes after positivism?” is one of the major questions in social theory today.

One possibility: we are already in a post-positivist age

Many thinkers argue that positivism stopped being the unquestioned dominant worldview decades ago.

Since the mid-20th century we have seen:

• skepticism toward grand narratives

• recognition that facts are interpreted through frameworks

• awareness of cultural and historical conditioning

• critiques of scientific reductionism

Thinkers such as Thomas Kuhn, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Derrida challenged the idea that objective knowledge alone drives history.

In that sense, “postmodernism” was perhaps the first major successor to positivism.

Another possibility: technocratic dataism

Some observers believe a new ideology has emerged:

Dataism

The term is associated with Yuval Noah Harari.

The idea:

• more data is better

• algorithms reveal truth

• decision-making should increasingly be delegated to systems

• optimization becomes a supreme value

This resembles positivism but shifts authority from scientists to networks, AI, and large-scale computation.

One could say:

Positivism: “Science discovers truth.”

Dataism: “Data processing discovers truth.”

Another possibility: ecological civilization

A growing worldview sees unlimited growth as the central problem.

Key themes:

• systems thinking

• ecological interdependence

• sustainability

• planetary limits

This perspective argues that positivism’s confidence in endless technological progress underestimated ecological constraints.

Many environmental philosophers believe this outlook may become increasingly dominant during the 21st century.

From a Zen perspective

The most interesting answer may be that none of these are genuine successors.

Zen would likely say that positivism, postmodernism, Marxism, capitalism, and even Buddhism become problematic when treated as total explanations.

The passage you photographed is arguing that Zen is “empirical” in a different sense:

• not empirical because of laboratories,

• empirical because of direct experience.

Suzuki often contrasts:

knowing about reality

with

directly experiencing reality.

In that framework, the next ideology is not the issue. The issue is the tendency of the mind to construct ideologies at all.

A long-wave social forecast

If we look at large historical patterns, a plausible sequence might be:

1. Religious civilization

2. Scientific-positivist civilization

3. Information/data civilization (where we largely are now)

4. Ecological-systems civilization (possibly emerging)

5. Something integrating science, ecology, and contemplative awareness

Interestingly, that fifth possibility is where thinkers such as D. T. Suzuki, Thomas Merton, and even some interpretations of Meister Eckhart become relevant. They anticipated a culture in which scientific knowledge remains respected, but direct awareness, contemplation, and lived experience regain authority alongside it.

Whether that becomes a dominant ideology is impossible to know, but many intellectual currents today—from mindfulness to systems theory to ecological thought—suggest that a purely positivist worldview no longer has the cultural monopoly it once seemed to possess.