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eality, real, tangible and distinct from our mental images? The second relates to critique and change in the subjective interpretation of observers. Are there any conditions in which it is possible to say interpretation X by individual Y is incorrect? Neither of these questions and concerns were adequately answered in Kant’s writing leading to major differing interpretations even in his own students. Thus his two most notable students (Georg Hegel and Johann Fichte) came to interpret Kantian thought in totally different ways because of these ambivalences. Hegel interpreted Kant’s thinking in such a way as to give emphasis to a material world which could be understood and misunderstood. He also gave emphasis to an ideal to which we should be aiming. These emphases, together, introduced notions of critique and change into understanding and action. Fichte, on the other hand, emphasized the highly subjective side of the ambivalences in Kantian thought. Everything to Fichte was a projection of our minds thus making a material existence uncertain. This led inevitably to a lack of critique in terms of interpretation. Put simply, if everything is a projection of our minds what right has anybody to question and challenge another person’s projections? Both interpretations are Kantian although markedly different. It is from these diverse roots that even greater diversity has been generated as Figures 4 and 5 indicate.Before looking at this diversity, however, it is important to take note of the rather more conservative amalgamation of the “rationalist” and “empiricist” traditions through the thinking of Auguste Comte. Comte’s thinking came during the height of the enlightenment developments generated by Kant which were sweeping European academic circles. It came about as partly a reaction to what was clearly seen as a highly subjectivist twist in the understanding process. Comte, rather than be part of this, went back to rationalist and empiricist traditions, as Kant had, and reworked them into a rather less critical amalgamation. What was needed, according to Comte, was not an abandonment to subjectivism but a balanced amalgamation of rationalism and empiricism into a new method (which he called “positivism”) which would allow absolute descriptions of the empirical world to be made distinct fromany observer bias and clearly separated from any attitude concerning the need for change in the observable referent. Critique and a desire for change was value- driven and not part of positivism and therefore was forcibly excluded. Comte’s positivism was a tightly defined rational, deductive process coupled with similarly clear rules on how to observe the empirical world – subjectivity, values and bias played no part in the makeup of positivism. The seeming certainty, which Comte introduced, was clearly like nectar to those worried by the shifting subjectivism of the “age of enlightenment” which Kant had engendered. It clearly grew in significance as Kolakowski (1972, p. 122) points out:Positivism dominated the spirit of the age to such an extent that even Kantians sought to interpret Kant – or to impute his thoughts – in such a way as to retain only what wa compatible with a broadly conceived positivism. With this, the golden age of the enlightenment was dinted but not destroyed However, Kantian thought and its derivatives, from this point on, was, and continues to be, on the defensive. The desire for certainty, which Comtean thought guaranteed, seemed to