ABSTRACT
In Max Weber's thought there is a close association between historical and sociological causality, which are both expressed in terms of probability. This chapter explains the procedure for arriving at historical causality, an essential step of which is the re-creation of what would have happened if one of the antecedents had not occurred or had been other than it was. All sociology is a reconstruction that aspires to confer intelligibility on human existences which are confused and obscure. Never is capitalism so clear as it is in the concepts of sociologists, and it would be a mistake to hold this against them. Weber writes that it is possible to re-create the imaginary evolution in two ways: by observing, first, what took place in regions actually conquered by the Persian Empire; and, second, by observing the state of Greece at the time of the battles of Marathon or Salamis. Weber conceives the causal relations of sociology as partial and probable relations.
