SOC231H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Natural Science, Unintended Consequences, Earl Warren
Document Summary
Life and times: personal and family life. He wanted to marry his cousin but couldn"t which is why he did not have a marital relation with his wife (they were just friends) He battled with temperaments and spent more of his life in a mental institution. Weber"s sociology: 2 major themes: forms of social action, class and power, gradual rationalization of social life bureaucracy. He thinks that the object of study is different from the object of study in the natural sciences. Any attempt to convert a natural science into a social science will fail because they have no meaning and it is just based on cause and effect (eg. atoms) Why is a purely causal question: no intention or meaning. Bacteria don"t blush; particles don"t get pissed off! Atoms don"t agonize; molecules don"t get miffed. Sociology no laws because social action is intentional. History is unique, non-repeatable events: sociology is close to history but not identical.
