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the object of investigation. In technical empiricism it is especially the life conditions of surveyed individuals and social groups that are examined superficially and fragmentarily. This kind of empiricism most frequently analyses the effects of various practical interventions only from the standpoint of their direct aims. In technical empiricism man as a human being and society as a whole are »placed within pa-rentheses«. Adorno’s critique of this methodological orientation is mostly justified.⁷⁷ Morę difficult are generalizations about descriptive empiricism. There prevails a scientifically and practically insignifi-cant factography, of a chronological or statistical type. However, there are also works which give very fuli and correct images of different spheres of social life, often precisely those where social contradictions are strongly pronounced. Broader theoretical interpretations and ex-planations of the results of such investigations are possible and useful.

The ideas held by the adherents of the critical theory concerning the characteristics of scientific experience about society are almost ai-ways confrontated with the above-mentioned variants of static con-servative positivism, but there are no methodological treatises where they have been systematically developed, so as to concrete generał methodological principles by the elaboration of special investigational approaches and numerous proceedings which appear and must be co-ordinated in any approach. Furthermore, in the critiques of different schools of thought in contemporary sociology, particular failings of those which are being criticized are often unreasonably generalized, and sometimes in polemical passion insufficiently corroborated objec-tions are madę, and it remains unclear whether it is the wrong utiliza-tion of a method, e. g. quantification, that is being criticized, or if the procedurę itself is being disputed.⁷⁸ However, the critical theory con-tains a number of very important passages about scientific experience on society and man. In critiques against restrictive approach to social reality in empiricism it has been pointed out that atomie empirical data are no basie facts but have been socially mediated. They express some generał social relationships in a morę or less mediated manner, so the data are scientifically almost useless unless the mediations are methodically determined. Up to here the critique of limited empiricism agrees with the concepts of global conservative theories. Es-sential differences between the critical and the latter theories emerge from an antagonistic conception of social totality. The biggest objec-tion to systematic conservative theories is that their conception of ex-perience is subordinated to attempts to facilitate superficial generalizations about social regularities which conceal various social contradictions and antagonisms. What is in these theories an uncontroversial expression of society’s generał characteristics, in Adomo’s interpreta-tion becomes the most important problem of the critical theory. »What we need is an explanation of homogeneity itself, inasmuch as human behaviour is subject to the laws of large numbers, rather than its ab-

rt Sec especially Th. W. Adomo, .Soziologie und empirische Forschung«, passim, and Soziologische Exkurse, chapters I, II, III.    _

ⁿ Many examples of this kind may be found in Horkheimers book, The Echpse

of Reason.

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