The positivist dispute continued the 1930s Vienna Circle versus Horkheimer circle conflict.

Evidence

Habermas, however, showing early signs of developing his own variation of Critical Theory, intervened in the positivist dispute'. The controversy that later went down in the history of the social sciences under this name had its roots in the 1950s. For Adorno, it was only a continuation of what had begun during the 1930s as a dispute between the Vienna Circle and the Horkheimer circle, with meetings for discussion between the Frankfurt and the Viennese groups taking place in Frankfurt, Paris and New York. In the best known of Horkheimer's essays it had been described as a conflict between traditional and critical theory’. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 594

Categorization

• XREF: Ties Horkheimer’s ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ essay directly to the post-war Positivismusstreit as one continuous lineage rather than a new controversy.
• DEFINE: The Positivist Dispute names the social-science controversy whose roots lie in the 1930s Vienna Circle/Horkheimer circle meetings in Frankfurt, Paris, and New York.