Max Weber`s View of Science
Author：Wahng-Shan Chang
Abstract /
Max Weber is, as Leo Strauss puts it, "the greatest social scientist of our century". Regardless whethere he thought himself primarily as a politician or a scientist, he was at any rate a scientist in the modern meaning of the word. That Max Weber is a Scientist par excellence is no question. What is nowadays still controversial is his conception of science (Wissenschaft), especially his conception of the so-called "verstehende Sociologie". "Modern Science" is for Max Weber a product of modern cultural epoch. It can be properly characterized as the "disenchanted science in a disenchanted world". But he was obviously against the widespread "positivist view of social sciences" and endeavoured to develop an alternative called "verstehende Sociologie". Why he must do that? What "more" can such a conception achieve than the positivist conception of social sciences? Is his conception of "verstehende Sociologie" a "science of man" (Wissenschaft wom Menschen)? And finally, what can such a conception mean for a scientist like Max Weber and for the "total life of mankind"? These questions should be discussed systematically.