Albert participated at this meanwhile famous Tagung der deutschen Gesellschaft für Soziologie (Conference of the German Society of Sociology) in 1961 in Tübingen.

In 1964, in the Soziologentag (Conference on Sociology) in Heidelberg, the debate grew into an excited discussion between Habermas and Albert.

[2][3] Albert developed Popper's critical rationalism into a concise, broad-ranging maxim, thereby extending it from a method to progress in science to one equally applicable in day-to-day heuristics.

Albert's well known Münchhausen trilemma is ironically named after Baron Munchausen, who allegedly pulled himself out of a swamp seizing himself by his shock of hair.

From this notion, Albert drew the conclusion that progress in science can only be achieved by means of falsification rather than inductive verification.

To observe and criticize the endeavors made to escape from the quagmire of certain justification became an instructive part of Hans Albert's philosophy.

A prominent example of these efforts is his discussion of the ideas of Karl-Otto Apel, one of Germany's leading philosophers, in his book Transzendentale Träumereien (Transcendental Reveries).

He avoided solemn preaching in favor of serious, serene discussion with people of different faith and thinking.

So he criticized Heidegger's "being in the abyss" ("Sein im Ab-Grund"),[5] Gadamer's "horizons melting together",[6] Habermas's "consensual theoretical truth in the ideal discourse",[7] Karl-Otto Apel's transcendental arguments,[8] and the theologian Hans Küng's "absolute-relative, this-life-and-hereafter, transcendental-immanent, allconcerning-allcontrolling most real reality in the very heart of things".

He was decorated with the Austrian Ehrenkreuz für Kunst und Wissenschaft der Republik Österreich in 1994 and received honorary doctorates from the universities of Linz (1995), Athens (1997), Kassel (2000), Graz (2006), and Klagenfurt (2007).