ABSTRACT
Sociology has resorted too often to unexamined positivist prescriptions in order to support both its theoretical orientation and its research practice. A thoroughgoing critique of the positivistic orientation in sociology must take account not merely of the methodological issues involved in social research but also of the theoretical and practical domains within which positivism exists. For this task, the work of the Frankfurt School provides one of the most comprehensive critiques of positivism in the social sciences. This opposition of positivism and critical theory has its historical antecedents in the social sciences and philosophy. Popper argues that, a so-called scientific discipline is only a circumscribed and constructed conglomeration of problems and attempted solutions. Popper's methodological individualism leads him to attest that the social sciences should concern themselves solely with specific problems. Adorno criticised the central concepts of Popper's methodology from the standpoint of critical theory.
