Positivism distorts science by hiding its constitutive interests and historical origins

Evidence

The natural sciences might then be misunderstood as pure theory that was not designed to achieve power over nature, but merely to make objective discoveries. The humanities might fall into the positivism of historicism. The social sciences might rigidify into social technology. According to Habermas (departing here from Kant), these transcendental conditions for the scientific relation to the world had arisen under empirical conditions. The basis for these lay in the `natural history of the human species’, 149 which sustained its existence through work and language, and was shaped by relations of power. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 606

Categorization

• DEFINE: Habermas’s naturalization of Kant’s transcendental conditions into empirical species history via work, language, and power.