Philosophy of Social Science

The issue that I will be examining in this paper is the nature of the difference between
social and natural science for Weber and the consequences I claim that this
differentiation has for Webers concept of causal explanation in historical research.
I shall start my argument by clarifying the way Weber uses the terms of Social and
Natural Science, mainly by what could be inferred from his writings. Then I will
proceed with what Weber perceived as the main differences between the two fields, as
well as their common scientific foundations. Then I will proceed to examine the
Weberian concept of history and its differences from other fields of Social Science,
namely Sociology and Economy. I shall, subsequently, examine the characteristics of
causal examination in History and how the differences and similarities of Social and
Naturalistic Endeavour reflect on it, by giving emphasis in what I perceive the three
main features of weberian historical causality; time, probability and certainty.

Webers concept of Natural Science and Social Science

The exact natural sciences

Weber does not give an articulated definition of his concept of natural sciences, as
he has characteristically done for so many of the terms used in his oeuvre, and thus
rests to the reader to infer his understanding of the term. The fact that Weber feels that
it is not necessary for him to elaborate on the nature and characteristics of the natural
sciences allows us to assume that Natural Science is being used in the conventional
way of his German academic milieu, one that he could have assumed his readers to
already be familiar with. The only insights one can have to Webers understanding of
the term stem from examples and clarifications he makes as he forwards his argument;
Weber seems to consider the formulation of causal laws in the core of the Natural
Sciences Methodology; in his Objectivity in Social Science he repeatedly refers to
the narrower laws of the exact Natural Sciences. What Weber seems to have in
mind with the terms narrow and exact are the laws of universal validity, formulated
through experimentation and used to explain individual events without relevance to
time and space1.
The achievements of the Natural Sciences had fascinated many 19 th and 20th century
social scientists, primarily sociologists who advocated that Social Science could
become truly scientific, only when it would be to reduce empirical reality into
universal and indisputable laws, in the same way Natural Science offered indisputable
results for the physical world. Weber differentiates himself from the Social Darwinists
and the Social Positivists. Callinicos rightly claims that he was participating in the
anti-naturalistic current, that advocated the denial that human beings and the social
world they created could be understood using the same methods and concepts of those
of the physical sciences2. Weber takes extra care to present in detail the
methodological differences between these two different fields of scientific inquiry
and these comparative references seem to help him clarify his own concept of
interpretative sociology. However, before going through these distinctive differences
between social and natural science it is essential that we examine what does the
former signifies for Weber.

1
Laws are important and valuable in the exact sciences, in the measure that those sciences are
universally valid, Max Weber, Objectivity in Social Science in May Brodbeck (ed), Readings in the
philosophy of Social Science,(New York: Macmillan, 1968)p. 91
2
Alex Calinicos, Social Theory, A Historical Introduction, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p. 153 and
one can also gain an insight on Webers view on Spencers Social Darwinism in his Letter to Rickert,
2 Nov. 1907, quoted in Hennis, Max Weber, p. 244 n.25

Alexandros Alexandropoulos
Social and Cultural Science; History, Sociology, Economy
Webers use of the term Social Science is equally hard to determine. In different texts
and as his theoretical project evolves there are different concepts used to refer to what
we today call collectively as social sciences. In Economy and Society the term social
science does not appear to be used, however in other articles and speeches for
example in Objectivity in Social Science and Social Policy- he makes significant
use of the term or uses the neighbouring term of cultural sciences see for example
Objectivity in Social Science. At the most general level we can infer that for Weber
there is proximity between the fields of Economy, History and Sociology, all of which
formulate a separate form of scientific inquiry. It is evident in Webers writings that
these three different fields are at least negatively separated on the one hand from the
natural science and on the other hand from the legal, juristic sciences 3. In Objectivity
in Social Science he seems to consider these three fields part of the wider category of
the cultural sciences; the common ground of these scientific fields is for Weber that
they all seek to analyse the phenomena of life in terms of their cultural significance.
Providing examples of that sort of cultural science Weber cites examples from the
research conducted in the fields of History, Economy and Sociology, permitting us to
safely assume that it these three fields that form the basic disciplines of cultural
science. Moreover, the cultural science seems to have striking similarities with
Webers interpretative sociology4, especially in the emphais they both attribute to the
Meaning of human action. Webers arguments in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft allows
to infer one of the most fundamental features of Webers perception of the Social;
meaning intended by the agent or the agents that involves a relation to another
persons behaviour5.

Method, Unity and Differentiation

Given Webers anti-naturalistic agenda it is reasonable that in his writings he stresses
the methodological differences between the fields of natural and social science.
Weber, however, advocates the unity of scientific method as well. Although less
emphasized in his texts, given the prevalence of naturalism in the scientific debate of
the time that gives Weber an additional polemical motivation to refute their positions,
unity of method is equally important for the weberian system of thought. The fields of
natural and social science differ in theoretical interest and subject matter; essentially it
is about differences in the nature and characteristics of Social Action on the one hand
and all forms of material, mechanical forces on the other. The methodology of the
social sciences is influenced by the fact that the latter are interested in those human
actions that are invested with Meaning. The process of culture, a construction of a
world-view is in the core of this theoretical interest; Culture is a finite segment of the
meaningless infinity of the world process, a segment on which human beings confer
meaning and significance6. Meaning as a concept, as one of the significant
characteristics of human action is central for Webers theoretical system and it is not
accidental that it has been so influential among the Heidelberg Neo-Weberians and the
emergent Decision Theory (De-cisio, Ent-scheidung)7. This weberian narrative of
3
Max Weber, Selections in Translation, ed. W.G. Runciman, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1978), p.7
4
Ibid
5
Ibid
6
Objectivity in Social Science, p.91
7
See for example Panajotis Kondylis, Macht und Entscheidung, Die Herausbildung der Weltbilder und
die Wertfrage, (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1984)
man as constructing out of the chaos of empirical reality, a sphere, an image to which
he attributes a particular meaning and the assumption that it is this very construction
that interests social sciences has a very particular consequence; the social scientist
will be never able to claim universal truth as long as culture is concerned no
hierarchy, no superiority can be established between them, there is an element of
ambiguity that stems from the way human beings construct their world-views.

Differences
Weber makes clear those distinctive differences that exist between the two fields. He
argues that applying naturalistic methodology to social phenomena not only does not
give us any insight on their nature but on the contrary disorient the researcher:
indeed, the more precisely they are apprehended in terms of natural science, the less
intelligible they become. This is certainly not the way to obtain an interpretation in
terms of intended meaning [].
The application of the exact laws, i.e. of these laws that claim universal validity and
with which all epiphenomena of the empirical reality can be analyzed are useless for
the social scientist.

Laws are important and valuable in the exact sciences, in the measure that those sciences are
universally valid. For the knowledge of historical phenomena in their concreteness, the most general
laws, because they are the most devoid of content are also the least valuable. [] the more
comprehensive the validity or scope- of a term, the more it leads away from the richness of reality
[] In the cultural sciences, the knowledge of the universal or general is never valuable in itself.

In contrast with the monistic analysis of physical phenomena, cultural/social sciences

can actually interpret and thus understand the behaviour of the agents; qcquire some
knowledge over their motives, the causal chain of their actions and their world-view,
the meaning they attribute to their actions and the actions of others. Since culture and
meaning are inherent in the Social, any inquiry into Social action could not possibly
claim truth or validity without achieving some insight or better some understanding of
them. In Webers words this interpretative understanding can achieve something;

[] which must lie for ever beyond the reach of all forms of natural science (in the sense of the
formulation of causal laws governing events and systems and the explanation of individual events in
terms of them). What we can do is to understand the behaviour of the individuals involved, whereas we
do not understand the behaviour of, say, cells. All we can do in the case of cells is to grasp their
behaviour in functional terms and then formulate laws governing the way it proceeds.

Of course the methodological route of the Social Sciences has its drawbacks. And that
is the objective inability of the social scientist to achieve indisputable, universal truth,
applied in a uniform way, irrelevant of the time and place, as Natural Science had
done, or claimed to had done in the modern era. But this drawback is not, for Weber,
to be attributed in an error, a misperception in interpretative methodology itself.
Ambiguity, or better a somewhat greater level of ambiguity, is an inherent trait of the
Social and the Cultural themselves. And I am referring to levels of ambiguity,
because, knowledge and truth can still be achieved, however not with the same level
of certainty as in the Natural Science. Weber justifiably argues that the category of
possibility always implies some form of knowledge, and since we can allocate
different degrees of possibility for all the different tracks of social action then we
should assume that there is something we can know about them (if that is at the
minimum level that some of them are more probable fro m some others).
A price has to be paid, admittedly, for these advantages which interpretative explanation has over
observational: the results obtained by interpretation are necessarily of a more hypothetical and
fragmentary character

And this hypothetical and fragmentary character is a mere reflection of the Meaning,
of this process of Culture, this construction of the World-view and its nature, an effect
rather than a cause of the fragmentary and subjective way human beings construct
their world-view, attribute meaning to actions, objects, actions, totems and thus
orientate their actions accordingly.

The unity of method

For all the differences Weber sees in the different fields of scientific inquiry he seems
to be firmly convinced of the unity of the scientific method. Both in Natural and
Social science there is a claim for validity, truth and logical plausibility; and in their
struggle to achieve validity by using plausible causal lines, the two find themselves
sharing the very fundamental faculties of reason. The first common basis is the
concept of scientific law, or better stated nomological knowledge. Although laws in
Social science cannot have the same scope, validity and surely cannot be abstracted in
the same naturalistic experimental methodology they still have some significant use.
Weber is using alternatively to law the more general term of nomological knowledge
to refer to a certain typology of causal relations and calls the readers attention to the
fact that his assertion that laws in the naturalistic sense could not be achieved in
Social science:

[] naturally it does not imply that the knowledge of universal propositions the constructions of
abstract concepts, the knowledge of regularities and the attempt to formulate laws have no scientific
justification in the cultural sciences8.

In fact laws are equally important in our cognitive procedure of the social phenomena
as well, playing, however, a slightly different role when used in the sphere of social
science; this nomological knowledge is one among many of the cognitive tools we can
use in order to achieve validity for our scientific assumptions:
Quite the contrary, if the causal knowledge of the historian consists of the imputation of concrete
effects to concrete causes, a valid imputation of any individual effect without the application of
nomological knowledge i.e. the knowledge of recurrent causal sequences- would in general be
impossible [] even in the case of the so-called economic laws without exception, we are concerned
here not with laws in the narrower exact natural science sense, but with adequate causal relationships
expressed in rules and with the application of the category of objective possibility. The establishment of
such regularities is not the end but rather the means of knowledge 9 []

However ambiguous the Meaning and consequentially Social Action it so much

influences, the social scientist still strives for validity and certainty;

The aim of all interpretation of meaning is, like that of science in general to achieve certainty 10.
8
Weber, Selections in Translation, p. 90
9
Ibid, pp.90-91
10
Ibid, p. 9
As Weber puts it the value-concepts inherent in any social analysis influence the
scientist mainly in his scope of interest, in the choice of those phenomena that will be
of theoretical interest to him.
Undoubtedly, all evaluative ideas are subjective. []. But it obviously does not follow from this that
research in the cultural sciences can only have results which are subjective in the sense that they are
valid for one person and not for others. Only the degree to which they interest different persons varies.
In other words, the choice of the object of investigation and the extent or depth to which this
investigation attempts to penetrate into the infinite causal web, are determined by the evaluative ideas
which dominate the investigator and his age. In the method of investigation, the guiding point of
view is of great importance for the construction of the conceptual scheme which will be used in the
investigation.

But while he seeks to realise his theoretical project his bound by the rules of logic,
seeking coherency for his line of reasoning, validity for his claims

In the mode of their use, however, the investigator is obviously bound by the norms of our thought just
as much here as elsewhere. For scientific truth is precisely what is valid for all who seek the truth 11.

In the weberian oeuvre logic and rationality is the common starting point of all
scientific inquiries, however different theoretical objects they seek to study.
All scientific work presupposes that the rules of logic and method are valid; these are the general
foundations of our orientation on the world and at least for our special question, these presuppositions
are the least problematic aspect of science 12.

Rationality is for the social scientist, one of the necessary steps in the process towards
certainty. There is more to explaining in a social phenomenon than understanding it;
however important is the latter for an adequate explanation. As Runciman notes:
Understanding someones behaviour is not a substitute for explaining it: on the contrary, it is only a
part of the necessary causal account and has itself, like any other hypothesis to be tested against the
evidence. But the need for, and indeed the possibility of, understanding the meaning which behaviour
has to the agent performing it is what distinguishes the explanation of behaviour from the explanation
of inanimate events (which of course, may also play a significant causal role in human history) 13

In the weberian system there seem to be two different levels; culture as a subjective
system of values shared by some particular historical agents or as the value system of
the scientist himself that influences his theoretical interests and of cultural phenomena
as objects of analysis, elements between which comparison and causal relations are to
be established14. Following a foundational reasoning, that reminds us of Sextus
Empiricus and Montaigne, Weber makes it clear that there can be no rational
verification or falsification of cultural and personal values, since these values have
ermged through irrational or even unconscious processes; any argument that would try
to prove the superiority of one axiological position over the other could not but be

11
Weber, Objectivity in Social Science p.92
12
Gerth and Mills, eds, From Max Weber, p. 143
13
Runciman, Introduction, in Weber, Selections in Translation, p.5
14
It is one thing to state facts, to determine mathematical or logical relations or the internal structures
of culture values, while it is another thing to answer questions of the value of culture and its individual
contents and the questions of the value of culture and its individual contents and the questions of how
one should act in the cultural community and in political associations. These are quite heterogeneous
problems, in Gerth and Mills, eds, From Max Weber, p. 143
cyclical, in the sense that with the absence of objective rational foundation any
advocate of a cultural value cannot, in final analysis, call in its defence nothing else
but the value it has for him. However, when one analyzes actions or factors that are
connected with them and tries to verify whether they are connected with relations of
causality or if not then the subjective character of the world-views of the social agents
is no longer relevant. Although one could not possibly offer a rational analysis of
Brutus world-view, he could offer, however, a rational analysis of the social forces
and the political milieu in which Caesars assassination took place. If one believes, as
Weber does, that in analysis of cultural phenomena there are relations of causality to
be reconstructed that logically allows us to infer that he must admit an element of
rationality in social action in general, and that includes past social actions, historical
action. What is at stake now is not the rational or irrational foundation of culture but
rather whether History has rational elements in it. Alex Callinicos summarizes
Webers position:
The methods of scientific research may thus be objective, but they operate within an inherently
subjective framework, since the objects of study, the purposes for which specific researches are
pursued, and the overall cultural roles of science itself all derive from value-ascriptions, which are
subject to no rational adjudication15

Rational intelligibility as Weber puts it is the goal of the social scientist, the
possibility of achieving an immediate and unambiguous intellectual grasp of
meaning and depending the nature of the object of analysis can be achieved in
different levels of success. Rational certainty and empathetic certainty are just two
different sides of the same cognitive procedure as opposed to naturalistic cognition
that is monastically depended in Rationality16.
Reflecting on this Weberian position, we could think of Wittgensteins claim, that in
fact, there is no private language. The world-views, the value systems, the Meaning,
other than efforts of orientation- our subjective responses to the challenge of infinite
chaos- are also communicative actions, constructed in reference to other human
beings, an effort to convey a message; and that means that cultural values subsume
to at least the very basic rules of discourse, the very basic grammar, and that allows
for inter-subject understanding and subsequently allows Weber to seek his rational
intelligibility, certainty, the valid interpretation, the valid explaining.

History and Rationality

15
Alex Calinicos, Social Theory, A Historical Introduction, (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), p. 156
16
This certainty in our understanding of action may take either a rational form (in which case it may
be either logical or mathematical) or the form of empathetically re-living the experience in question
(involving the emotions and artistic sensibility). Rational certainty is achieved above all in the case of
an action in which the intended complex of meanings can be intellectually understood in its entity and
with complete clarity. Empathetic certainty is achieved when an action and the complex of feelings
experienced by the agent is completely relived in the imagination. Rational intelligibility, which here
implies the possibility of achieving an immediate and unambiguous intellectual grasp of meaning, is to
be found in its highest degree in those complexes of meaning which are related to each other in the way
in which mathematical or logical propositions are. [] on the other hand, there are a number of
ultimate goals or values towards which a mans actions may, as a matter of empirical fact, be directed
which we very often cannot understand with complete certainty, though in some cases we can grasp
their meaning at an intellectual level [] even when such emotions far exceed anything of which we
ourselves are capable, we can gain some understanding of their meaning by empathy and we can
intellectually allow for their influence on the direction taken by the action and the means used in
performing it, Max Weber, Selections in Translation, pp.8-9
Webers concept of History
As we have already seen History for Weber seems to be a member of a wider group of
cultural sciences along with Economy and Sociology and the three are usually
grouped together in Webers writings. Weber claims that this three fields share a
common feature that allows us to group them in Cultural Sciences and that is
Verstehen as a vital part of their explaining/cognitive procedure.
History in the weberian sense seems to be this field of the Interpretative cultural
Sciences that gives a special emphasis in the explaining of the particular phenomenon
in a past time, in the case study.

The term understanding refers to the interpretative grasp of the meaning or pattern of meanings which
are either (a) really intended in a particular case (as is normal in the historical enquiry) or (b) intended
by the average agent to some degree of approximation (as in sociological studies of large groups) or (c)
constructed scientifically for the pure or ideal type of a frequently occurring phenomenon (this we can
call ideal typical meaning). Examples of such ideal typical constructions would be the concepts and
laws formulated in pure economic theory17.

And as do Sociology and Economy, History finds itself being obliged by the Subject
matter of its study to apply both Understanding and Causal Explanation in its
methodology to achieve a valid analysis. The Historian faces problems similar to the
Sociologists; since he must explain human social action18 -even in a particular
historical moment- he must strive for Understanding, for adequate and valid
interpretation of the Meaning attributed by the agents to a particular historical action
for example the assassination of Caesar- while at the same time he must reconstruct a
valid causal chain between different elements and factors of the action, a causal chain
which must achieve some level of certainty. And in order to do so he must put his
theoretical hypotheses into experimentation and testing, although, contrary to the
natural sciences, this testing can only be mental, can only happen to the mind of the
Historian. The methodological tool of objective possibility, the main tract through
which the historian may restore the causal relations and offer a plausible interpretation
of historical phenomena is a result of the particularities faced with the Cultural
Sciences in general and of History in particular.
The historical research, faced already with the problems inherent in the Sciences of
Meaningful Social Action, has to deal with one additional difficulty; the time gap that
exists between the Historian and the object of his analysis; the conditions of any
particular event are not repeatable and the sources that the Historian needs to acquire
an understanding of them may, simply, not be available and that makes it even more
difficult to achieve a certain level of historical certainty.
However, since History is a cultural science and since our theoretical interest in any
particular historical object is influenced by our value-systems, the Historian is not
obliged to strive for an exact and absolute reconstruction of all the historical facts 19.
That is absolutely futile, since, in the field of Social Science we seek to analyze only
what is interesting to us, in reference to our value system. Although we do know how
Caesars brain cells would function, and in fact we know in an absolute and universal
way how cells function in general, Caesars death and the Meaning attributed to it by
other agents could not be possibly been known with a similar level of absolute
certainty and in fact it does not even have to. In the same way that all the agents
17
Max, Weber, ibid, p. 12
18
And in fact when Weber uses the terms history here he always refers to those accounts of past social
action; History of the private world or a historical narrative that does not involve the actions of men is
not even conceivable by Weber.
19
Max Weber, Selections in Translation, p. 116
participating in this phenomenon attributed a particular meaning to their actions which
we can only partially grasp, the historian himself approaches his material in the light
of his own values and interests.
As in other cultural sciences Weber believes that some short of certainty can be
achieved in History, and stresses the fundamental unity of the scientific process;
reasoning is still reasoning whether in Natural Sciences or in History 20. He claims that
in historical research we could at least claim in principle [] that we can achieve a
considerable degree of objective possibility21.
In this passage from The Logic of Historical Explanation Weber articulates the
distinctive methodological characteristics of historical research, the abstracted
experimentation of the historian with the different factors and their contribution to
the historical chain, the value-preconceptions of the historian and the influence they
have in historical analysis, the research for causal relations and valid explanation:

The very first step towards an historical judgement is thus [] a process of abstraction, which proceeds
by means of analysis and isolation in thought of the constituents of what is immediately given, seen as
a complex of possible causal relationships, and which should result in a synthesis of the real causal
connexions. Already, therefore, the first step transforms the given actuality into an intellectual
construct, so as to make it into an historical fact: following Goethe, we may say that fact involves
theory22.

Conclusion to History and Rationality

The specific characteristics of cultural sciences that are reflected here in historical
endeavour influence the Weber's perception of causal explanation in historical
analysis. The historian can thus establish causal relations, only through the
imaginary experiments, a mental process in which he must fragment the different
elements that formulate a historical phenomenon and try to clarify the role each one
had, if any in the causal chain. That of course is due to the fact that social sciences
dealing with meaningful phenomena could not possibly reproduce it in a social
laboratory, and thus it is only the Understanding faculties of the Social Scientist that
could lead him to some elucidations on any given social action. Any causal explaining
offered in history is also influenced by the fact that Social Science cannot by nature
achieve the same level of validity and truth as natural sciences do. The mere nature of
the analysis subject, social action, in which the ambiguous element of value and
meaning is inherent only allows for some level of validity and certainty. However the
unity of method between natural and social sciences mean that history, as well, is
subject to rational analysis and a field were truth can achieved even if not with the
same certainty that can be achieved in the natural sciences. The historian cannot
construct strict laws that pronounce that in every case a factor A is present a certain
outcome is going to be produced. But the historian might say that in a particular
20
But the situation is absolutely identical in such fields of knowledge as mathematics and the natural
sciences, which have made truly major discoveries: they all begin as hypotheses, flashes of imaginative
intuition and are then verified against the facts- that is their validity is tested by means of the empirical
knowledge which has already been acquired and they are formulated in a logically correct form. The
same is true in history: when it is claimed here that knowledge of what is essential is bound up with the
use of the concept of objective possibility, this is not meant to be an answer to the question how a
historical hypothesis comes into the mind of the researcher [] but to the question of the logical
category in which its validity is to be demonstrated in cases of doubt or dispute- for that is what
determines its logical structure. []. For historical accounts, too, claim validity as truth, Max Weber,
Selections in Translation, p. 121
21
See for certainty and historical research pp. 124-127
22
Weber, Selections in Translation, pp 118-1119
historical moment a certain factor had causally contributing in a specific outcome, by
rendering it more probable than other outcomes23. For Webers historical causal
explanation three concepts are of great importance; firstly the concept probability in
the sense that causal factors can only be claimed of influencing the probabilities that a
certain action occured, rather than necessarily producing it. Secondly, the concept of
certainty, the fact that the Historian by making use of the historical data (for example
writing records), and of the scientific method of rational analysis, along with a form
of an experimentation that is appropriate for the historical science can in fact achieve
certainty, at least in some degree. And, finally, an increased importance of time, that is
that every historical explaining is offered for a particular historical event, in a
particular time and space, in contrast to sociology that seeks to construct average and
ideal types, very often inferring from various historical data, in different historical
times, that is a little less dependent from the notion of time.

References

Max Weber, Selections in Translation, ed. W.G. Runciman, (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1978)

Max Weber, Objectivity in Social Science, in May Brodbeck (ed), Readings in the
philosophy of Social Science,(New York: Macmillan, 1968)

23
[] but we can estimate the relative degree of general favouring [certain modes of human reaction]
by drawing a comparison with the way in which the alteration in thought of other conditions would
have favoured it. And if we make this comparison in imagination through sufficiently many
conceivable alterations of circumstances, then it is nevertheless conceivable, at least in principle []
that we can achieve a considerable degree of objective possibility, Weber, Selections in Translation,
pp.124-127
Alex Calinicos, Social Theory, A Historical Introduction, (Cambridge: Polity Press,
2007)

H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills (eds.), From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology,
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1946)