598 Notes to pp. 426– 428
conjectures which are controlled by severe criticism. It is a consciously
critical development of the method of “trial and error”.... The so-called
objectivity of science lies in the objectivity of the critical method. This
means, above all, that no theory is beyond attack by criticism.’ Popper, in
The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology, p. 89f.
70 Adorno, ‘On the Logic of the Social Sciences’, in The Positivist Dispute in
German Sociology, p. 120.
71 Hans-Joachim Dahms maintains that both Adorno and Horkheimer used
the concept of positivism ‘really quite loosely’ even in the initial phase of
their first discussion of this philosophical trend in the late 1930s. ‘The
label “positivist”... frequently means nothing more than a scientist who
devotes himself or has devoted himself at some time in the past... to the
serious individual pursuit of scientific research’ (Dahms, Positivismusstreit,
p. 92f.). However, Habermas has shown in his own contributions to the
debate that Adorno had a very clear idea of positivism. His critique of
positivism is indebted for many of its ideas to an essay by Horkheimer,
‘Der neueste Angriff auf die Metaphysik’, that appeared in the Zeitschrift
für Sozialforschung in 1937. Horkheimer wrote this essay in close coop-
eration with Adorno, who had written a number of detailed letters with a
large number of suggestions about the line of argument to be taken. See
the letters from Adorno to Horkheimer, 28 November 1963 and 23 March
1937, Horkheimer, Briefwechsel, GS, vol. 15, p. 752ff., and also vol. 16,
p. 96ff.; Horkheimer, ‘Der neueste Angriff auf die Metaphysik’, GS,
vol. 4, p. 108ff.
72 Adorno, ‘Introduction’ to The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology,
p. 3.
73 This critical offensive, which is based on a contrast between ‘positivist’
and ‘dialectical’ conceptions, makes it clear that Adorno had ‘changed his
opinion about Popper after 1961’ (Hans-Joachim Dahms, Positivismusstreit,
p. 353); for Habermas’s subsequent view of the dispute, see Habermas,
Logik der Sozialwissenschaften, p. 7ff.; for a general account of the
dispute about the nature of sociology, see Alex Demirovic, Der
nonkonformistische Intellektuelle, p. 741ff.
74 Nominalism holds that there is no objective reality corresponding to
cognitive forms of thought. Concepts are regarded as the subjective con-
tents of consciousness or as linguistic names (nomina). In the history of
philosophy, nominalism is regarded as a forerunner of empiricism.
75 Karl Popper, ‘The Logic of the Social Sciences’, p. 96.
76 Adorno, ‘Introduction’ to The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology,
p. 28.
77 Adorno, Introduction to Sociology, p. 159.
78 Adorno, ‘Introduction’ to The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology,
p. 55f.; cf. also Introduction to Sociology, p. 102f.
79 Adorno, ‘Introduction’ to The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology,
p. 23.
80 Ibid., p. 32.
81 Adorno, ‘Anmerkungen zum sozialen Konflikt heute’, GS, vol. 8, p. 194.
82 Adorno, Philosophische Terminologie, vol. 1, p. 83.
83 Adorno, draft for Sociologica II. See p. 4 of the attachment to the letter to
Horkheimer, 31 January 1962, Horkheimer–Pollock Archive, Stadt- und