Empirical Criticism Research Articles

Donna Haraway’s Antiphilosophy: Objectivity Without Objectification

Donna Haraway’s article “Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Femi- nism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective” (1988) has been translated into Rus- sian by Lolita Agamalova and Elena Kostyleva, and their translation is published for the first time in this issue of Logos. The translators provide a foreword which dis- cusses the relationship between power and knowledge as a central issue for Haraway and for feminist epistemology. For Haraway, this question primarily concerns posi- tions of power in the production of scientific knowledge. The foreword explores the context in which Haraway’s work emerged and its synthetic attitude toward both the social-constructionist approach to the problem of objectivity in science and femi- nist critical empiricism. Haraway’s position reaches a critical understanding of the metaphysical method as producing knowledge obtained “from nowhere,” knowledge as if seen by the eye of God. From her point of view, men undertake the production of knowledge as if they are disembodied, not burdened with corporeality, as if they have leaped out of their bodies (she calls this the “god trick”). As an alternative, Har- away suggests using other methods of visualization (vision from a specific point, an embodied position, a particular body) conceptualized by her as multiple “situated knowledges.” Taken to its limit, this approach would be antiphilosophical. But at the same time, what happens to philosophy itself if power and knowledge are denoted within it? Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe’s article La transcendance finit dans la politique (1981) is considered on this issue for its analysis of Heidegger’s attempt to assert the hegemony of philosophy over other sciences.

Dialogue-Based Learning: A Framework for Inclusive Science Education and Applied Ethics

Dialogue-based learning is an inclusive pedagogy that leverages epistemological pluralism in the classroom to enhance cross-cultural education, encourage critical thinking across modes of inquiry, and promote novel contributions in applied ethics. The framework emerged from the Buddhism-science dialogue and our experiences teaching science courses for Tibetan Buddhists in India through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. Buddhism and science are two modes of inquiry that emphasize critical inquiry and empiricism, yet navigating complementarities and points of friction is challenging. Our proposed framework aims to raise awareness of onto-epistemological assumptions to convert them from obstacles into assets in dialogue. In drawing attention to epistemological orientations, our framework demonstrates that receptivity to other ways of knowing fosters clarity in one’s own views while creating space for new and enriching perspectives. In this article, we contextualize the Buddhism-science dialogue, explore the development of our dialogue-based learning framework, and demonstrate its application to a novel exchange about the COVID-19 pandemic. Broader aims of the framework include increasing scientific literacy and advancing transdisciplinary research.

Relevance and Verification

AbstractA. J. Ayer’s empiricist criterion of meaning was supposed to have sorted all statements into nonsense on the one hand, and tautologies or genuinely factual statements on the other. Unfortunately for Ayer, it follows from classical logic that his criterion is trivial—it classifies all statements as either tautologies or genuinely factual, but none as nonsense. However, in this paper, I argue that Ayer’s criterion of meaning can be defended from classical proofs of its triviality by the adoption of a relevant logic—an idea which is motivated because, according to Ayer, the genuinely factual statements are those which observation is relevant to.

Graduate teaching assistants: sharing epistemic agency with non-science majors in the biology laboratory

In teaching laboratories, scientific reasoning and argumentation are often taught in concert so students are provided opportunities to formulate a more nuanced understanding of science-as-practice and science as a social epistemology. Given recent calls to attend to the social aspects of science, we used Critical Contextual Empiricism, a social epistemology of science, as a framework for examining what features of a scientific community emerge in the introductory biology lab. In a case study of six graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), we explored how GTAs encouraged epistemic agency that encouraged their student’s efforts at knowledge construction in a community by collecting multiple data sources (e.g. audio recordings, students written work, focus group interviews) over a four-week sequence. Data analysis strategies were inductive, as a series of initial and focused coding were applied to select exchanges garnered from within the lab. Comparative analysis identified common occurrences across each respective case, which then revealed three overarching themes. We intended for GTAs to readily encourage epistemic agency to their students so insights regarding the social nature of knowledge production could be experienced and discussed. When epistemic shifts did occur, GTAs executed discursive moves targeting students’ experimental design practices (e.g. defining the dependent variable). Conversely, student’s efforts were also de-legitimized as GTAs provided specific directives to follow when challenges emerged for students. Finally, GTAs struggled to create a genuine community that modeled exemplary science-as-practice in the lab. Implications discuss how GTAs likely require more targeted support if community-driven learning is going to be successful in these uniquely challenging settings. Finally, working with non-science majors adds an additional layer of importance here given these lab-based experiences are limited and understanding the community’s role in generating scientific knowledge is a key component of being scientifically literate.

A Modal Free Lunch

The meaning and truth conditions for claims about physical modality and causation have been considered problematic since Hume’s empiricist critique. But the underlying semantic commitments that follow from Hume’s empiricism about ideas have long been abandoned by the philosophical community. Once the consequences of that abandonment are properly appreciated, the problems of physical modality and causal locutions fall away, and can be painlessly solved.

Androcentrismo, ciencia y filosofía de la ciencia

In this work we will take up again the contributions of the feminist philosophy of science around androcentrism, with special emphasis on biology and biomedical sciences. We will propose that such contributions can be ordered according to three different senses of androcentrism, and that important tensions appear between these senses. Following the path traced by Longino, contextual critical empiricism, we will defend that the rational reconstruction of theories can help us to specify where patriarchal decision vectors crouch in scientific practice. To this end, we will present an alternative analysis to Longino’s and use it as an input to discuss the idea of type brains in the framework of the neuroendocrinology of behaviour.

Hayek and the Methodenstreit at the LSE

ABSTRACT Friedrich Hayek’s Inaugural Address at the London School of Economics (LSE), ‘The Trend of Economic Thinking’ (1 March 1933), has been recognized as of particular importance for the understanding of his work. In it, Hayek argues that economics has a key role of showing what we cannot achieve: of showing that some attractive ideals are utopian. In developing this theme, Hayek referred to Mises’ arguments about the problems of economic calculation under socialism; but the idea – which I suggest might be seen as a theory about the structural constraints imposed by a flourishing market economy – becomes a more general motif in Hayek’s work. In the lecture, Hayek’s ideas are developed through engagement with the younger German Historical School of economics, which is criticized for espousing methodological ideas that would call the idea of such constraints into question. In this article, I suggest that there were also local targets at the LSE. I discuss the way in which William Beveridge, the Director of the LSE, and Lancelot Hogben, who held a Chair in Social Biology there, were engaged in an extended empiricist critique of the methodological ideas of the LSE economists and of theoretical economists more generally in ways close to the younger German historical school.

Skeptomai. Il problema dello scetticismo antico in Mario Dal Pra

Mario Dal Pra’s survey of ancient skepticism from the initial phase of trascendentalism of praxis to critical empiricism in the 1960s and 1970s proceeds in two directions. On the one hand, he calls into question the traditional Kantian division of the skeptical currents advanced by Victor Brochard, highlighting their historical and theoretical interconnections with the grounds for previous philosophical reflection (the Socratic, Megaric, and Stoic schools); on the other hand, he determines the realistic foundation of skeptical negation and connects it with its phenomenalism of knowledge. Therefore, especially in their later phase, the skeptical positions appear to be guided by a specific logical setting for the criticism of knowledge that Dal Pra detects both in the awareness of different logical levels of argumentation and in epilogism. This is the skeptical attempt to overcome the absolute negation of truth for a philosophy of experience, which will find its fulfillment in David Hume’s moderate skepticism and even in some theological advances in Johannes Scotus Eriugena’s agnosticism.

Causal Empiricism in Quantitative Research

Quantitative analysis of causal effects in political science has trended toward the adoption of “causal empiricist” approaches. Such approaches place heavy emphasis on causal identification through experimental and natural experimental designs and on characterizing the specific subpopulations for which effects are identified. This trend is eroding the position of traditional regression studies as the prevailing convention for quantitative causal research in political science. This essay clarifies what is at stake. I provide a causal empiricist critique of conventional regression studies, a statement of core pillars of causal empiricism, and a discussion of how causal empiricism and theory interact. I propose that the trend toward causal empiricism should be welcomed by a broad array of political scientists. The trend fits into a broader push to reimagine our discipline in terms of collective research programs with high standards for evidence and a research division of labor.

Kritisk empiri. Ett historiografiskt perspektiv

<p>The article discusses the possible value of a ”critical empiricism” as the forgotten ”other” of the well-established critical theory. Following Swedish sociologist Johan Asplund, critical empiricism is described as ”seeing what others have not seen”. The ”theoretical turn” in architectural research is questioned with the help of architectural historians Anders Åman and Mari Hvattum. The 1940s discussion of Swedish architecture as “new empiricism” introduces a strong relation between the Nordic welfare societies and their architecture as a characteristic also of Swedish architectural history.</p><p>The article presents a recent historiographical project by a network of Swedish architectural historians from universities and schools of architecture. One of the networks’ papers is about Gregor Paulsson’s book <em>Svensk stad </em>[Swedish Town], an “environmental history” with a pronounced sociological perspective and an ambition to influence Swedish post-war planning. Another paper discusses architectural history as the study of building categories, a firmly established tradition in Swedish architectural history, in this case with a fundamentally “functional” perspective. A third paper is a critical study of the 1970s turn from architectural history as a history of monuments to a history of the built environment in its broadest sense.</p><p>In conclusion, critical empiricism in architectural history is presented as a vigorous and necessary reminder of how society could be different in a time when humanities as well as planning are questioned by politicians.</p>

Reality-Based Television Versus the Civil Right to Privacy: A Battle of Access

the general public has come under closer scrutiny from those who seek to obtain information about them, whether they like it or not, from technologies such as hidden cameras, Internet spyware, miniature recording devices, and super-telescopic photography lenses (e.g., Elder, Johnson, and Rishwain). Society's interest in voyeurism or curiosity (Baruh 202) appears to fuel a growing of television programming called reality TV. Its popularity has influenced traditional television journalistic newsgathering practices and along the way has created challenges regarding the public's right to privacy.In Wilson v. Layne and Berger v. Hanlon, the US Supreme Court's decisions affected newsgathering techniques that can be used by journalists while accompanying law enforcement officials during the execution of a search warrant. Shulman v. Group W Productions further altered the media's process of gathering information by clarifying access to emergency situations and access to patients where guarded personal information is exchanged between the victim and an emergency respondent.These decisions were meant to provide outlets with clear boundaries regarding the public's right to know versus the public's right to privacy or the First Amendment versus the Fourth (Esch; Gossett; C. Calvert). The outlets in question were print and broadcast news organizations in the Wilson and Berger decisions. The courts did not specify whether alternative programming provided by independent television production companies was included under the media ridealong decision.With the rise of reality-type information gathering, the question remains of whether or not these lines of privacy have been crossed (Mast). The theoretical and context of this research is to explore implications of decisions regarding privacy rights and apply them to justice (Erikson) and accident and emergency format (Kilborn; Bondebjerg) reality-type television programming.TheoreticalOrbe suggests using diverse methodological and theoretical approaches to critical scholarship (350). Cross-disciplinary research methods are employed during this article's exploratory study, including genre criticism (Butler 432) examining production techniques, critical analysis of reality television (Lunt; Hight), and critical or empirical studies (Trubek 585), where concepts are applied to sociological inquiry.Previous critical (CLS) are associated with application of social science and research on the behavior of actors (Trubek 600). Trubek postulates that a relationship exists between legal beliefs and practice (604) and social order and action. Critical empiricism (Coombe 71) in law is applicable in film theory, the ideological efficacy (118) of television. Causal research in CLS, proposes Tushnet, is an interminable critique (516) on social values. Miller posits the field of television borrows from CLS (3). CLS allows an opening in sociological research, with foundations providing a basis for critical application.This article examines the rise of the tabloid journalism type of reality television (Cavender and Fishman; B. Calvert et al.; Turner) and applies Prosser's torts on privacy to the production of nonfiction documentary-style programs, otherwise noted as reality-type television. The article focuses on one state case, Shulman v. Group W, and two federal cases, Berger v. Hanlon and Wilson v. Layne, to the application of reality television programming.Reality Television DefinedThere are many definitions of reality-based television programming. Prosise and Johnson, expanding on Cavender and Fishman, indicate a belief that reality programming blurs the line between news and entertainment . . . fact and fiction (Prosise and Johnson 73), where the videotaped interactions are presented to the audience as real rather than fictionalized encounters (e. …

Remarks on the idealist and empiricist interpretation of frequentism: Robert Leslie Ellis versus John Venn

The goal of this paper is to correct a widespread misconception about the work of Robert Leslie Ellis and John Venn, namely that it can be considered as the ‘British empiricist’ reaction against the traditional theory of probability. It is argued, instead, that there was no unified ‘British school’ of frequentism during the nineteenth century. Where Ellis arrived at frequentism from a metaphysical idealist transformation of probability theory’s mathematical calculations, Venn did so on the basis of an empiricist critique of its ‘inverse application’.

An Empiricist Criterion of Meaning

The meaning of scientific propositions is not always expressible in terms of observable phenomena. Such propositions involve generalizations, and also terms that are theoretical constructs. I study here how to assess the meaning of scientific propositions, that is, the specific import of theoretical terms. Empiricists have expressed a concern that scientific propositions, and theoretical terms, should always be, to some degree, related to observable consequences. We can see that the former empiricist criterion of meaning only implies for theoretical terms not to be definable in terms of observable, but that their use put a constraint on the observable consequences of a theory. To that effect, Ramsey’s method of formal elimination of theoretical terms can be an interesting tool. It has faced important logical objections, which have mostly been addressed with respect to the problem of the ontological commitment of the second-order quantification they imply. I show here that these criticisms can be overcome, and that there can be a successful Ramsey elimination of theoretical terms with first order sentences, making Ramsey’s method a relevant tool to assess the empirical meaning of scientific propositions.

The Empirical Stance vs. The Critical Attitude

Van Fraassen has recently argued that empiricism can be construed as a stance, involving commitments, attitudes, values, and goals, in addition to beliefs and opinions. But this characterisation emerges from his recognition that to be an empiricist cannot be to believe, or decide to commit to belief in, a foundational proposition, without removing any basis for a non-dogmatic empiricist critique of other philosophical approaches, such as materialism. However, noticeable by its absence in Van Fraassen’s discussions is any mention of Bartley’s ‘pancritical rationalism’, for Bartley offers a cohesive argument that genuine dogmatism lies precisely in the act of commitment to an idea. The consequence of denying this, he thinks, is an opening of the floodgates to irrationalism: if to rely on reasoned argument in decision-making is fundamentally an act of faith, then there is a tu quoque - “I simply have a different faith” - that may be employed by those who wish to shield their views from criticism.This raises the following question: why should it be any less dogmatic to adopt particular commitments, attitudes, values, and goals, rather than a particular belief or opinion, come what may? And if Bartley is right that there is only one non-dogmatic attitude - the critical attitude - then why might this not be adopted by an empiricist, a materialist, a metaphysician, or anyone else?

The philosopher's toolkit: a compendium of philosophical concepts and methods

Preface. Acknowledgements. 1. Basic Tools for Argument. 1.1 Arguments, premises and conclusions. 1.2 Deduction. 1.3 Induction. 1.4 Validity and soundness. 1.5 Invalidity. 1.6 Consistency. 1.7 Fallacies. 1.8 Refutation. 1.9 Axioms. 1.10 Definitions. 1.11 Certainty and probability. 1.12 Tautologies, self-contradictions and the law ofnon-contradiction. 2. More Advanced Tools. 2.1 Abduction. 2.2 Hypothetico-deductive method. 2.3 Dialectic. 2.4 Analogies. 2.5 Anomalies and exceptions that prove the rule. 2.6 Intuition pumps. 2.7 Logical constructions. 2.8 Reduction. 2.9 Thought experiments. 2.10 Useful fictions. 3. Tools for Assessment. 3.1 Alternative explanations. 3.2 Ambiguity. 3.3 Bivalence and the excluded middle. 3.4 Category mistakes. 3.5 Ceteris paribus. 3.6 Circularity. 3.7 Conceptual incoherence. 3.8 Counterexamples. 3.9 Criteria. 3.10 Error theory. 3.11 False dichotomy. 3.12 False cause. 3.13 Genetic fallacy. 3.14 Horned dilemmas. 3.15 Is/ought gap. 3.16 Masked man fallacy. 3.17 Partners in guilt. 3.18 Principle of charity. 3.19 Question-begging. 3.20 Reductios. 3.21 Redundancy. 3.22 Regresses. 3.23 Saving the phenomena. 3.24 Self-defeating arguments. 3.25 Sufficient reason. 3.26 Testability. 4. Tools for Conceptual Distinctions. 4.1 A priori/a posteriori. 4.2 Absolute/relative. 4.3 Analytic/synthetic 4.4 Categorical/modal. 4.5 Conditional/biconditional. 4.6 De re/de dicto. 4.7 Defeasible/indefeasible. 4.8 Entailment/implication. 4.9 Essence/accident. 4.10 Internalism/externalism. 4.11 Knowledge by acquaintance/description. 4.12 Necessary/contingent. 4.13 Necessary/sufficient. 4.14 Objective/subjective. 4.15 Realist/non-realist. 4.16 Sense/reference. 4.17 Syntax/semantics. 4.18 Thick/thin concepts. 4.19 Types/tokens. 5. Tools of Historical Schools and Philosophers. 5.1 Aphorism, fragment, remark. 5.2 Categories and specific differences. 5.3 Elenchus and aporia. 5.4 Hume's fork. 5.5 Indirect discourse. 5.6 Leibniz's law of identity. 5.7 Ockham's razor. 5.8 Phenomenological method(s). 5.9 Signs and signifiers. 5.10 Transcendental argument. 6. Tools for Radical Critique. 6.1 Class critique. 6.2 Deconstruction and the critique of presence. 6.3 Empiricist critique of metaphysics. 6.4 Feminist critique. 6.5 Foucaultian critique of power. 6.6 Heideggerian critique of metaphysics. 6.7 Lacanian critique. 6.8 Critiques of naturalism. 6.9 Nietzschean critique of Christian-Platonic culture. 6.10 Pragmatist critique. 6.11 Sartrean critique of 'bad faith'. 7. Tools at the Limit. 7.1 Basic beliefs. 7.2 Godel and incompleteness. 7.3 Philosophy and/as art. 7.4 Mystical experience and revelation. 7.5 Paradoxes. 7.6 Possibility and impossibility. 7.7 Primitives. 7.8 Self-evident truths. 7.9 Scepticism. 7.10 Underdetermination. Internet Resources for Philosophers. Index.

Political Judgement between Empirical Experience and Scholarly Tradition: Engelbert Kaempfer's Report on Persia (1684-85)

The article attempts a reconstruction of the ways in which the pro duction of knowledge about Persia was organised by Engelbert Kaempfer in his writings. This late seventeenth century German traveller to Asia has been unfailingly commended for his critical empiricism. While this has been taken for granted in thefield of natural sciences—Kaempfer was a famous physician and botanist—it is more difficult, when searching for the foundations of his judgement about the political system of Persia, to distinguish between experience and scholarly tradition. The article provides a survey of the information Kaempfer had to rely upon. A comparison between these sources and the report itself gives us some insight into the processes through which the production of socio-political knowledge about an alien world took place and how the encounter with the alien exercised an influence on the political judgement of a seventeenth century explorer.

Kant's early critics: the empiricist critique of the theoretical philosophy

Acknowledgements Frequently cited texts and abbreviations Introduction: major trends in the early empiricist reception of Kant's critical philosophy Part I. Feder/Garve and Garve: 1. The Gottingen review 2. The Garve review: Christian Garve, 'Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant' Part II. The Transcendental Aesthetic: 3. Dietrich Tiedemann, 'On the Nature of Metaphysics: An Examination of Professor Kant's Principles - Against the Aesthetic' 4. [Hermann Andreas Pistorius], 'Elucidations of Professor Kant's 'Critique of Pure Reason,' by Johann Schultze' 5. Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, On Space and Causality: An Examination of the Kantian Philosophy, 1-64, 84*-91* 6. [Anonymous], 'On Space and Causality: An Examination of the Kantian Philosophy by Johann Georg Heinrich Feder' 7. Friedrich Gottlob Born, Investigation into the First Grounds of the Doctrine of the Senses, 87-92 Part II. Idealism: 8. Johann Georg Heinrich Feder, On Space and Causality: An Examination of the Kantian Philosophy, 61-83*, 114-118 9. J. C. G. Schaumann, On the Transcendental Aesthetic: A Critical Attempt, 131-175 10. Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi, 'On Transcendental Idealism' 11. [Hermann Andreas Pistorius], 'Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant' 12. Friedrich Gottlob Born, Investigation into the First Grounds of the Doctrine of the Senses, 117-120, 141-153 Part IV. The Categories: 13. C. G. Selle, 'Attempt at a Proof that there are no Pure Concepts of Reason that are Independent of Experience' 14. Dietrich Tiedemann, 'Continuation of the Examination of Professor Kant's Thoughts about the Nature of Metaphysics - Against the Analytic' 15. [Johann Schultz], 'Institutiones Logicae et Metaphysica by Jo. Aug. Henr. Ulrich' 16. Gottlob August Tittle, On Kantian Forms of Thought or Categories, 3-41, 103-11 Part V. Empiricism vs. Purism: 17. Carl Christian Erhard Schmid, Some Remarks about Empiricism and Purism in Philosophy Occasioned by Selle's Principles of Pure Philosophy' 18. [Hermann Andreas Pistorius], 'On Carl Christian Erhard Schmid's essay about Kant's Purism and Selle's Empiricism' Appendix A: about the authors Appendix B: biographical sketches of figures in early Kant reception Notes Glossary Bibliography Index.

Homo-Formalism: Analogy in "The Sacred Fount"

In The Principles of Psychology (1890), William James sets out to investigate the commonsense belief the thoughts which psychology studies do continually tend to appear parts of personal selves (227). The primary question about experience, according to James, is why it seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned (226). In putting the question this way, James takes issue with Hume's empiricist critique of identity, his conclusion that persons nothing but a bundle or collection of perceptions, and thus whatever we may have to imagine that simplicity and of the self, [t]here is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different (35152). James's argument in the Principles is that this critique of the unified self ignores the most crucial evidence in its favor: what Hume identifies our natural propension to imagine that we are so unified. For James, the fact that individuals continue to experience themselves selves, despite all evidence to the contrary, suggests that this of self must be more than a mere mistake. What holds the self together in his analysis is, in the end, a feeling of warmth and intimacy (331) with one's past thoughts, a recognition that they all belong to the same self. And thus it is, finally, he claims, Peter, awakening in the same bed with Paul, and recalling what both had in mind before they went to sleep, reidentifies and appropriates the 'warm' ideas his, and is never tempted to confuse them with those cold and pale-appearing ones which he ascribes to (334). What is striking, I think, about this moment in the Principles is that the model for the routine way in which the self gets constituted a self in everyday life is an image of two men waking up in bed together. In calling attention to the strangeness of this image, however, I do not mean to suggest that the Principles is somehow really about homosexuality. In fact, it is precisely the asexual and unerotic nature of this image of Peter and Paul waking up together that interests me. One might argue that James relies on such an image here because the issue he's addressing is the issue of sameness, the way in which individuals inevitably recognize the sameness of their past and present selves. Given that (with their alliterative names) Peter and Paul are meant to work mirror images of one another, James is asking how it is that Peter, on awakening next to Paul, has no problem recognizing that he is himself and not Paul. His answer is that while we make judgements of similarity all the time, some things are more the same than others. No matter how warm and intimate are Peter's feelings for Paul, no

Legalizing Gender Inequality: Courts, Markets, and Unequal Pay for Women in America.

List of figures and tables Acknowledgements 1. Law, markets, and the institutional construction of gender inequality in pay Part I. Theory and Method: 2. Legal theories of sex-based pay discrimination 3. Toward an organizational theory of gender inequality in pay 4. Methodological approach: law cases, case studies, and critical empiricism Part II. The Case Studies. Section A. Public Sector Organizations: 5. Paternalism and politics in a university pay system: Christensen v. State of Iowa 6. Bureaucratic politics and gender inequality in a state pay system: AFSCME v. State of Washington Section B. Private Sector Organizations: 7. Corporate politics, rationalization, and managerial discretion: EEOC v. Sears, Roebuck & Co. 8. The financial institution as a male, profit-making club: Glass v. Coastal Bank Part III. Conclusion: Legalizing Gender Inequality: 9. Rethinking the relationship between law, markets, and gender inequality in organizations Appendix: court documents and case materials used in case studies References Index.

Objectivity and Insecurity

relationship between the Frankfurt School project of social research and empirical method in mainstream sociology is widely acknowledged to be an ambivalent one. From its inception in the early 1930s, the Institut , fur Sozialforschung had maintained as its principal thesis that empirical sociological method required the guidance of a dialectical theory of society in order to overcome its status as a mere manifestation of bourgeois ideology. Interwover with this thesis a series of ruthless critiques of the positivist approach to the human sciences that had become dominant in the Anglo-American world, an approach characterized by Horkheimer in the 1937 essay The Latest Attack on Metaphysics as one that belongs to a type of human being which is still relatively powerless. In spite of its active nature, this type tends to be passive in decisive matters.1 However, the program to forge a successful integration of factual data collection into a critical theory of society remained a problem throughout the lifespan of the Institute and its members, and hence, itself a passive endeavor. In fact, the earnestness with which Horkheimer, and especially Adorno, approached empirical method is portrayed by several Frankfurt School scholars and historians as half-hearted at best. It wasn't until 1938 that Adorno, in exile in the United States, actually took part in his first empirical study under the direction of Paul Lazarsfeld in the Princeton Radio Research Project. Beset by conflicts in perspective between the two men from the outset, with Lazarsfeld turning the criticisms of fetishism, neurosis, and sloppiness that leveled upon the subjects of his study back on himself,2 the experiment ended in failure two years later. And with the exception of the Gruppenexperiement of 1954 (the fervent criticisms of which marked the be- ginning of what would later be called the Positivist Dispute), gradually distanced himself from the research process, preferring the tasks of the theoretician to those of fieldwork. Thus his highly abstract and seemingly vague proposals for a melding of speculative theory and empirical method in sociology have led such commentators as Rolf Wiggershaus to conclude that was not serious about the plans he had in mind for a critical empiricism.3 Others, like McCarney, have even gone further by stating that Adorno was, of course, notoriously indifferent to the question of the objectification of his ideas in action.4 Given the prevalence of scepticism on this issue, we should hardly find it surprising that the better portion of the contemporary scholarly literature having to do with focuses mainly on his work on aesthetic theory or on the sort of cultural criticism employed in the Dialectic of Enlightenment and in Prisms. Having been more or less pushed aside, or used merely as a foil for later theorists like Habermas or Foucault, the reconstructive sociology that had in mind now seems to be a subject fit more for an historian than for a serious theorist. However, despite the present intellectual climate, I would like to hold at a distance for the moment the questions of Adorno's level of commitment and the success of his project, in order to address directly his proposals for a more coherent science of society. In particular, I wish to examine the complex relation of empirical method to speculative theory as laid out most explicitly in his contributions to Positivist Dispute in German Sociology for the purpose of determining how, or whether, an integration of these two elements is made possible in such a way that it successfully avoids the difficulties faced by each in isolation from the other. My intent here will be twofold: 1 ) to outline Adorno's critique of dominant traditional sociological research methods, and 2) to provide a critical analysis of the measures that proposes as a necessary alternative to these methods in gaining a comprehensive understanding of society as it actually functions. …