Abstract
Exactly 100 years ago, Max Weber outlined in his lecture “Science as a Vocation,” what the material and above all the inner meaning of scientific action comprises. We would like to question some of Weber’s basic concepts and further develop some of his basic ideas in order to see more clearly what we as professors and social scientists are doing—in the present field of science, out of which reality is more and more displaced, or better: people’s concrete practice of life seems to have been thinned out. At the center of our considerations are the terms “progress,” “rationalization,” and “meaning,” and we will try to show how they are based on the self-conception of science and what consequences this has for scientific practice. Our central argument is that scientific practice takes part in the production of social reality and that it is only in the awareness of this in which scientific practice renders “intellectual accountability” (intellektuelle Rechenschaft) (Weber).
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Notes
In his lecture, Weber talks about how his own academic career is largely based on such mere chance and proclaims that: “I know of hardly any career on earth where chance plays such a role. I may say so all the more since I personally owe it to some mere accidents that during my very early years I was appointed to a full professorship in a discipline in which men of my generation undoubtedly had achieved more that I had. And, indeed, I fancy, on the basis of this experience, that I have a sharp eye for the undeserved fate of the many whom accident has cast in the opposite direction and who within this selective apparatus in spite of all their ability do not attain the positions that are due them.” (Weber 1946/1919, 2)
E.g., Karin Leitner (1996). “Die Prüfungstaxen-Millionäre” [The examination-millionairs], News 46: 36.
On falsification in science in general, Di Trocchio (1994) is still worth reading.
Own translation: German original: “genauso fadenscheinig [hielt] wie das schwächliche Lichtlein, das vom wissenschaftlichen Denken im an sich dunklen Strom des unendlich Wirklichen angezündet wird” (Lehmann 1995, 170).
Own translation: German original: “Damit der Wissenschaftler zu seinem Wissen kommt, muss er das Unendliche verendlichen.”
Own translation: German original: “Alle denkende Erkenntnis der unendlichen Wirklichkeit durch den endlichen Menschengeist beruht […] auf der stillschweigenden Voraussetzung, daß jeweils nur ein endlicher Teil derselben den Gegenstand wissenschaftlicher Erfassung bilden, daß nur er ‘wesentlich’im Sinne von ‘wissenswert’sein solle.”
Boltanski in the sense of Wittgenstein describes “world” as “everything that is the case” or “anything that could be the case, which points to the impossibility of recognizing and controlling the world as a whole” (Boltanski 2015, 24–25). Own translation. German original: “alles, was der Fall sein könnte, was auf die Unmöglichkeit verweist, die Welt insgesamt zu erkennen und zu beherrschen.”
It is interesting that sociologists like Boltanski quite naturally resort to psychological theories, while conversely psychological theories seldom refer to sociological ones.
Own translation: German original: “Einerseits hat sich die Realität zweifellos niemals als so organisiert, robust und dadurch so vorhersehbar dargestellt wie in den modernen westlichen Gesellschaften. Aber andererseits, und vielleicht aus denselben Gründen, tritt ihre Fragilität oder das, was man dafür hält, in den Vordergrund und scheint eine noch nie dagewesene Verunsicherung hervorzurufen. Ich denke, dass der Kriminalroman diese Verunsicherung inszeniert und dass der Hauptgrund für seinen Erfolg darin zu suchen ist, wie kunstvoll er diese Verunsicherung in Bezug auf die Realität der Realität zum Ausdruck bringt.” (Ibid., 46)
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Benetka, G., Schor-Tschudnowskaja, A. Max Weber: Science as a Vocation—100 Years Later. Hu Arenas 2, 499–508 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-019-00070-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s42087-019-00070-0