Specify the metatheoretical assumptions informing the work of Max Weber, illustrating your answer by reference to his substantive concepts.

Like his French counterpart, Émile Durkheim, Max Weber (1864-1920) was interested in scholarly disputes about method and theory in sociology, as he writes in The Methodology of Social Science: "Only by identifying and solving objective problems were sciences established and their method further developed; never, on the other hand, have epistemological or methodological considerations been decisively involved" (Weber, 1904, p145). Weber was influenced by the German sociologist Wilhelm Dilthey (1833-1911), who articulated the distinction …

…of the Cultural & Social Sciences, Harvard: Harvard University Press Weber, M., 1903-6 (1975), Roscher and Knies: The Logical Problems of Historical Economics, New York: Free Press Weber, M., 1903-1917 (1949), The Methodology of the Social Sciences, Edward Shills and Henry Finch (eds.), New York: Free Press Weber, M., 1904 (1949), "Objectivity" in Social Science in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, New York: Free Press Weiss, J., 1986, Weber and the Marxist World, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul