Positivismusstreit (The Positivist Dispute)

The term Positivismusstreit was coined by Theodor Adorno to characterize a dispute that started formally at a meeting of the German Sociological Association in Tübingen in 1961 and that shook the sociological community in Germany from the 1960s to the early 1970s including the revolts around 1968. In addition to Adorno, this dispute included the most prestigious social thinkers such as Hans Albert, Ralf Dahrendorf, Jürgen Habermas, Harald Pilot, Karl R. Popper, and later Niklas Luhmann. In effect, the dispute is ongoing, and may possibly never end, as it is a fundamental dispute about the paradigms within social thought. In effect, it continues a dispute that started at the beginning of the twentieth century and was known as the Methodenstreit (dispute over methodology), and in ...