Positivists’ calculative thinking is itself interest-laden and not value-free.

Evidence

There was another important argument which Horkheimer did not use: that the calculative thinking which the positivists hypostatized was itself by no means value-free. It sprang from an interest in having control over nature, just as the social theory defended by Horkheimer sprang from an interest in having a rational society. The positivists’ basic argument for setting limitations on thought thus affected their own thinking as well. But for Horkheimer the concept of domination over nature, whatever he understood by it, was too self-evident for him to see this, and he even wanted to extend it to human nature as well. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 752

Categorization

• XREF: Prefigures Habermas’s knowledge-constitutive interests (‘technical interest’) in Knowledge and Human Interests — a later Frankfurt School generation making exactly the argument Horkheimer missed. — connects to: Positivism’s calculative thought is itself built on a nature-control interest; Empirical-analytic sciences secretly carry a technical cognitive interest masked as value-freedom. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2423
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: Habermas’s reformulation of instrumental reason as a knowledge-constitutive interest directly answers this gap Horkheimer left open.

Broader Connections

• Empirical-analytic sciences secretly carry a technical cognitive interest masked as value-freedom. #corroborates (0.95) — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 2423