Max Weber Quotes

As Cuvier could correctly describe a whole animal by the contemplation of a single bone, so the observer who has thoroughly understood one link in a series of incidents should be able to accurately state all the other ones, both before and after.

We may either proceed from principles to facts, or recede from facts to principles.

The ideal reasoner, he remarked, would, when he had once been shown a single fact in all its bearings, deduce from it not only all the chain of events which led up to it but also all the results which would follow from it.

Logic is a poor model of cause and effect.

Reasoning draws a conclusion, but does not make the conclusion certain, unless the mind discovers it by the path of experience.

...we are entitled to make almost any reasonable assumption, but should resist making conclusions until evidence requires that we do so.

Logic teaches rules for presentation, not thinking.

A theoretical system does not merely state facts which have been observed and that logically deducible relations to other facts which have also been observed.

The deductive method is the mode of using knowledge, and the inductive method the mode of acquiring it.

The knowledge of anything, since all things have causes, is not acquired or complete unless it is known by its causes.

It can hardly be denied that such a demand quite arbitrarily limits the facts which are to be admitted as possible causes of the events which occur in the real world.

What I don't like so much is to give explanations about people's behaviour... I'm not interested in making conclusions. I would never think about myself or anyone else, 'Well, this happened, this happened, this happened, so this must be the result.' It doesn't work like that with me.

Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.

Indeed, every true science has for its object the determination of certain phenomena by means of others, in accordance with the relations which exist between them.

A theory can be proved by experiment; but no path leads from experiment to the birth of a theory.

A great book seeks to explain causality, not correlation. It works to point out the circumstances in which it works, and where it doesn't. And in so doing, it is broadly applicable.

Why is this thus? What is the reason for this thusness?

Prediction is certainly a valuable goal in science, but not the only one. Explanation is also important, and there are plenty of sciences that do a lot of explaining and not much predicting.

The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.

I hold that the mark of a genuine idea is that its possibility can be proved, either a priori by conceiving its cause or reason, or a posteriori when experience teaches us that it is in fact in nature.

Facts do not speak for themselves. They speak for or against competing theories. Facts divorced from theories or visions are mere isolated curiosities.

From a drop of water a logician could infer the possibility of an Atlantic or a Niagara without having seen or heard of one or the other.

We need to have an understanding of what causes what to happen in the world, and why.

We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.