Page "Frankfurt School" Paragraph 33

Horkheimer opposed it to " traditional theory ", which refers to theory in the positivistic, scientistic, or purely observational mode – that is, which derives generalizations or " laws " about different aspects of the world.

Drawing upon Max Weber, Horkheimer argued that the social sciences are different from the natural sciences, inasmuch as generalizations cannot be easily made from so-called experiences, because the understanding of a " social " experience itself is always fashioned by ideas that are in the researchers themselves.

What the researcher does not realize is that he is caught in a historical context in which ideologies shape the thinking ; thus theory would be conforming to the ideas in the mind of the researcher rather than the experience itself: