Large-scale explanations
aggregation and interpretation
pp. 198-218
Abstract
The relation between Durkheim's Suicide and his Rules of Sociological Method is this: Suicide is, at least in part, an attempt to exemplify the doctrine expounded in the Rules. The relation between Weber's methodological works and his writings on capitalism, both of which develop and change, is less straightforward. Weber referred to "Objectivity" in "The Protestant Ethic" (1958, p. 200), but he did not make explicit appeals to von Kriesian language or considerations in the body of the essay "The Protestant Ethic". The primary evidence in Weber's own writ for connections between the thesis of the protestant ethic essay and the methodological essays comes from the contemporary methodological essays themselves. In "Objectivity", when he discussed the methodological problems of explaining capitalism, he seems to have been telling us how he regarded the explanation in "The Protestant Ethic" (1949, pp. 89–98; 1922, pp. 189–99; 1958, p. 200).1
Publication details
Published in:
Turner Stephen P. (1986) The search for a methodology of social science: Durkheim, Weber, and the nineteenth-century problem of cause, probability, and action. Dordrecht, Springer.
Pages: 198-218
DOI: 10.1007/978-94-017-3461-5_11
Full citation:
Turner Stephen P. (1986) Large-scale explanations: aggregation and interpretation, In: The search for a methodology of social science, Dordrecht, Springer, 198–218.