ABSTRACT
Natural history and social history emerged in the twentieth century as methodological guides that overcame the finality of mathematico-deductive logic and indicated an unmistakable trend toward dialectification in the critical philosophy of nature, society, science, and culture. One of the chief questions discussed in the international debate on dialectics is the problem of methodological reductionism and the correspondence theory of truth as they relate to critical theory. Critical theory is opposed to naive realistic thinking whether of a common sense or scientistic sort. It emphasizes the complicated social, historical, and political mediations that necessarily intervene in "pure" science, traditionally conceived. In a marked advance over views critical of science and technology published in 1944 in Dialectic of Enlightenment, Theodor Adorno advocated a structural systems-analysis over logical atomism and empiricism. He saw social scientific knowledge as itself societal, dialectical thought as itself societal, consistent with Georg Lukács's notion of the concrete totality.
