ABSTRACT
Max Weber's pronouncements on method are commonly drawn upon by those theorists who seek to press a sharp distinction between the aims and procedures of the natural sciences and the aims and procedures of the social sciences. The procedure that Weber recommended took the shape of an imaginative experiment. Weber was thoroughly conversant with the Marxist notion of false consciousness he might have been expected to cast some doubt upon it in the course of establishing his own views on method. Unlike some of his intellectual heirs, Weber by no means regarded the use of statistical techniques as an exercise in mystification or as a distortion of the subtle realities of social life. The philosophy of science is concerned less with understanding the physical universe than with understanding the subjective meanings of scientists themselves as a professional body. Having set up his ideal-type bureaucracy, Weber might have been expected to compare it against empirical cases of bureaucracy.
