Positivism, Logical Positivism and Empiricism. What is the difference?

Question

I have come to understand that there is a difference in the time that these were thought up, but what is the difference in their meaning?

Answer 1

"Empiricism: (1) A proposition about the sources of knowledge: that the sole source of knowledge is experience, or that either no knowledge at all or no knowledge with existential reference is possible independently of experience."

http://www.ditext.com/runes/e.html

"Logical Positivists [assure us] that such concepts as metaphysics or existence or reality or thing or matter or mind are meaningless—let the mystics care whether they exist or not, a scientist does not have to know it; [ ] Knowledge, they said, consists, not of facts, but of words, words unrelated to objects, words of an arbitrary social convention, as an irreducible primary; thus knowledge is merely a matter of manipulating language. "

http://www.aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/lo...

"Positivism is a system of philosophical and religious doctrines elaborated by Auguste Comte. As a philosophical system or method, Positivism denies the validity of metaphysical speculations, and maintains that the data of sense experience are the only object and the supreme criterion of human knowledge; as a religious system, it denies the existence of a personal God and takes humanity, "the great being", as the object of its veneration and cult. We shall give a brief historical sketch of Positivism, an exposition of its fundamental principles, and a criticism of them."

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12312c.h...