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Weber locates the differentiation between the social and natural sciences within a fundamental division between the sciences: those seeking knowledge of concrete events and those directed towards the development of causal law. The validity of a causal explanation of a concrete event depends upon the evidence available rather than upon the capacity to subsume that event under a law. The impossibility of explanation by subsumption, the role of value-relevance in conceptualizing the object domain, the use of categories of adequate causation (...) and objective possibility in imputing causes, and the unlikelihood of dernonstrating causal necessity are characteristic of any effort to gain knowledge of concrete phenomena. Weber adds a distinction between natural and sociocultural sciences based on the subject matter of the sciences. The task of the sociocultural sciences, unlike that of the natural sciences, is that of "interpreting the meaning which men give to their actions and so understanding the actions themselves." Sociocultural explanations can and must demonstrate meaning adequacy as well as causal adequacy by making the dynamic bond between cause and effect intelligible. (shrink)

Philosophers and social scientists will welcome this highly original discussion of Max Weber's analysis of the objectivity of social science. Guy Oakes traces the vital connection between Weber's methodology and the work of philosopher Heinrich Rickert, reconstructing Rickert's notoriously difficult concepts in order to isolate the important, and until now poorly understood, roots of problems in Weber's own work.Guy Oakes teaches social philosophy at Monmouth College and sociology at the New School for Social Research.