Max Weber's Defense of Historical Inquiry

Abstract

That there are differences between social and natural phenomena is hardly a matter of dispute, and there is little question that these differences result from role of subjective states such as purposes, attitudes, and beliefs in human affairs. The important question is not whether these differences exist but whether they lead to fundamental differences between natural and social sciences. As Bhaskar notes, this is primal question of philosophy of social and it has dominated social sciences since their birth.1 The ardently contested issues raised by question of relationship between social and natural sciences have permeated social-scientific disciplines in disputes that have decisively shaped their development.2 Perhaps it is only a slight exaggeration to suggest that differences between various schools within social sciences are reducible to different ways these issues have been resolved. The framework for discussion of these issues was in large measure work of Max Weber. This is not surprising from a thinker labeled the last universal genius of social sciences3 by an admirer and the greatest social scientist of our century4 by one of his harshest critics. Although Weber's interest in methodological issues was secondary and his writings on subject usually polemical, erudition and insight with which he analyzed character of social sciences have commanded continuing attention. This attention has focused primarily on Weber's insistence that susceptibility of social phenomena to interpretative understanding radically distinguishes them from natural phenomena and creates a unique task for social sciences. This alone, however, says nothing about relationship between social and natural sciences, and no aspect of Weber's thought has been more controversial or more variously construed than nature of interpretative understanding and its significance for logic of sociocultural inquiry.5