Max Weber and the Methodology of the Social SciencesTransaction Publishers - 82 pages |
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according action actor analysis appears attempt become Brentano called causal causes claim concepts concerned concrete conduct Consequently Construction context criticism Critique cultural Dilthey Dilthey's direct discovery discussion domain economics elements empirical epistemological essay establish evidence example existence experience explanation fact foundations given hand historical human Husserl idea immediate important individual inference inner intentions interpretation issues Knies knowledge language laws logical Max Weber meaning mental method methodological motives natural sciences noted notion object observation original emphasis particular perception person phenomenology Philosophy of Science physical Popper position positivism possible present problem psychology pure question rational reality reasons reference regarding rejected relations result Rickert Roscher rules scientific seems sense short Simmel simply social action social sciences Sociology sort subjective suggest theoretical theory thought tion translation understanding validity Weber writings York
Popular passages
Page 56 - Weber use the phrase of the contemporary hermeneutic tradition in which one talks of 'that experience of truth that transcends the sphere of the control of scientific method' (Gadamer 1975, p. xii). But neither is Weber adopting an allegedly 'positivist' stand. On the contrary Weber was, in contemporary jargon, a 'post-empiricist' long ago when the logical positivists were only beginning their ill-fated enterprise.
Page 74 - ... did from vanity, then something entailed by Ryle's analysis is true: the boaster wanted to secure the admiration and envy of others, and he believed that his action would produce this admiration and envy; true or false, Ryle's analysis does not dispense with primary reasons, but depends upon them. To know a primary reason why someone acted as he did is to know an intention with which the action was done. If I turn left at the fork because I want to get to Katmandu, my intention in turning left...
Page 69 - A correct causal interpretation of a concrete course of action is arrived at when the overt action and the motives have both been correctly apprehended and at the same time their relation has become meaningfully comprehensible.
Page 18 - Our aim is the understanding of the characteristic uniqueness of the reality in which we move. We wish to understand on the one hand the relationships and the cultural significance of individual events in their contemporary manifestations and on the other the causes of their being historically so and not otherwise.
Page 73 - During any continuing activity, like driving or elaborate performance, like swimming the Hellespont, there are more or less fixed purposes, standards, desires, and habits that give direction and form to the entire enterprise, and there is the continuing input of information about what we are doing, about changes in the environment, in terms of which we regulate and adjust our actions. To dignify a driver's awareness that his turn has come by calling it an experience...
Page 9 - ... a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already known. Its assimilation requires the reconstruction of prior theory and the re-evaluation of prior fact...
Page 13 - Enter a laboratory; approach the table crowded with an assortment of apparatus, an electric cell, silk-covered copper wire, small cups of mercury, spools, a mirror mounted on an iron bar; the experimenter is inserting into small openings the metal ends of ebony-headed pins ; the iron oscillates, and the mirror attached to it throws a luminous band upon a celluloid scale ; the forward-backward motion of this spot enables the physicist to observe the minute oscillations of the iron bar.
Page 8 - The invention of other new theories regularly, and appropriately, evokes the same response from some of the specialists on whose area of special competence they impinge. For these men the new theory implies a change in the rules governing the prior practice of normal science. Inevitably, therefore, it reflects upon much scientific work they have already successfully completed. That is why a new theory, however special its range of application, is seldom or never just an increment to what is already...
Page 13 - ... celluloid scale; the forward-backward motion of this spot enables the physicist to observe the minute oscillations of the iron bar. But ask him what he is doing. Will he answer 'I am studying the oscillations of an iron bar which carries a mirror'?