I am a neo-positivist
During my last study year and my master thesis I had detected that the only thing I really liked in my sociology study were the methodological issues of empirical research. I was very convinced to go on in this direction. By my job at the Free University, teaching statistics, I was also stimulated in that direction. However immediately, in the second year there, I was confronted with opposition of the students against empirical research.
Student opposition against empirical research
In the social faculty of the Free university but also in many other universities in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the world a debate started about the ideas of the “Frankfurt School” concerning the “Critical theory” which should be a critical analysis of society. The form in which this "school" came to our faculty was that students claimed that the social sciences should move away from the neo-positivist approach of science. They did not want to test small scale theories but discuss criticism on the society as a whole. This was done by theoretical analyses and not by empirical research collecting data and testing hypotheses.
This was a movement against the methods which the group I was part of was teaching. Somebody should enter in the debate but the professor of the group did not say anything. As a strong supporter of empirical research I felt obliged to go in debate with the students. So I opened the debate by stating in the media of the faculty: “I am a neo-positivist and I am willing to defend this position in public”. The debate was organized where I defended neo-positivism or empirical research against the supporters of the Critical theory.
In the social faculty of the Free university but also in many other universities in the Netherlands and elsewhere in the world a debate started about the ideas of the “Frankfurt School” concerning the “Critical theory” which should be a critical analysis of society. The form in which this "school" came to our faculty was that students claimed that the social sciences should move away from the neo-positivist approach of science. They did not want to test small scale theories but discuss criticism on the society as a whole. This was done by theoretical analyses and not by empirical research collecting data and testing hypotheses.
This was a movement against the methods which the group I was part of was teaching. Somebody should enter in the debate but the professor of the group did not say anything. As a strong supporter of empirical research I felt obliged to go in debate with the students. So I opened the debate by stating in the media of the faculty: “I am a neo-positivist and I am willing to defend this position in public”. The debate was organized where I defended neo-positivism or empirical research against the supporters of the Critical theory.
I detected, preparing this text, that I used the same arguments which were used by the famous social scientist Lazarsfeld in 1938 when these researchers were in the USA. He wrote to Adorno: “Your disdain for verification methods is not justified, the more so because what you write makes me think that you even don´t know how you empirically can test a hypothesis”. Nevertheless, in a journal article in 1941, he also wrote: "If it would be possible to create a manageable research program, including empirical research, with respect to concepts of the Critical theory, then all participants and the project will profit of this."
I made the same remarks and this stopped the discussion on the research methods and several supporters of the Frankfurt School came to our research group to do their Critical research, but we forced them to use empirical methods to test their ideas. In the more theoretical oriented departments these students created a lot of problems, even so much that some professors left the faculty.
I made the same remarks and this stopped the discussion on the research methods and several supporters of the Frankfurt School came to our research group to do their Critical research, but we forced them to use empirical methods to test their ideas. In the more theoretical oriented departments these students created a lot of problems, even so much that some professors left the faculty.