ABSTRACT
Knowledge of persons could only be gained through an interpretative procedure grounded in the imaginative recreation of the experiences of others to grasp the meaning which things in their world have for them. With Wilhelm Dilthey, Max Weber accepted the importance of 'interpretative understanding' as the distinctive form of knowledge for the sociohistorical sciences but only as a means towards objective knowledge. Weber's analysis of the economically innovative behaviour of ascetic Protestants ascribes a particular set of religious motivations which caused the persons holding beliefs to work harder, be thrifty in their ways, endeavour to succeed in all that they did, and so on. The practices of ordinary language in respect of causal attributions versus the imputations of motives or reasons are well taken in connection with particular actions, but are not exactly relevant to social science which is concerned with the explanation of whole classes of actions.
