Notes to pp. 425– 426 597sociology, a second tradition has survived, as Bonß shows, which is
recognizable by its emphasis on the monograph as a form. Either model
can be based on one or the other conception of the empirical. This means
that the equation of the empirical with factual knowledge is mistaken: ‘The
expression “monographic form” points to strategies of constructing and
appropriating reality in which empirical entities are defined and delimited
not by number and measurement, but by so-called qualitative procedures
that amount to a subject-specific and situation-specific construction of
empirical reality by a set of inductive generalizations.’ Ibid., p. 98.
64 Karl Popper was born in Vienna in 1902, and after a colourful youth
became a lecturer in philosophy at the University of New Zealand at the
age of thirty-five. He was forced into emigration because of the threat
posed to Jewish left-wing intellectuals in Austria by the rise of National
Socialism. On the strength of the publication of the Logik der Forschung
in 1934, he was given a chair at the London School of Economics, where
he stayed until his retirement in 1969. Popper’s theory of scientific know-
ledge developed through a critical engagement with logical positivism. It
is linked to his anti-dogmatic approach and his espousing of an open,
pluralistic society. He attacked the foundational positivist conception of
scientific knowledge, according to which a number of hypotheses can
be derived from particular observations and can themselves be made to
yield laws. On the one hand, he objects that induction from a number
of individual observations cannot be made to serve as the foundation of
universal laws. On the other hand, he rejects the idea that there could be
observations that are not themselves in part the product of theory. Popper
assumes furthermore that there is no absolutely certain starting-point
for knowledge, and nor is there a single possible method for finding it.
Scientific theories are distinguished by the fact that they may be falsified
by further knowledge. The scientist is under an obligation to look for facts
that refute his theories. The progress of scientific knowledge is the product
of successful problem-solving through the elimination of mistakes by a
process of trial and error. Popper, ‘Die Logik der Sozialwissenschaften’.
[English original: The Logic of Scientific Discovery, London, 1959. This
was a translation with additional appendices and footnotes of the Logik
der Forschung of 1934.]; cf. Manfred Geier, Karl Popper.
65 See Hans-Joachim Dahms, Positivismusstreit; Rainer M. Lepsius, ‘Die
Entwicklung der Soziologie nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg 1945 bis 1967’;
Weyer, Westdeutsche Soziologie 1945–1960.
66 See Michael Schmid, ‘Der Positivismusstreit in der deutschen Soziologie
dreißig Jahre danach’, p. 37.
67 This is an argument advanced by Jürgen Habermas later on in his state-
ment on the logic of the social sciences. He maintained that ‘the research
process instigated by human subjects belongs, through the act of cognition
itself, to the objective context that is to be apprehended.’ Habermas, ‘The
Analytical Theory of Science and Dialectics’; Adorno et al., The Positivist
Dispute in German Sociology, p. 132.
68 Ibid., p. 111.
69 Ibid., p. 114. Popper too claims criticism for his own scientific model. In
his presentation, ‘The Logic of the Social Sciences’, he states: ‘Thus the
method of science is one of tentative attempts to solve our problems; by