ABSTRACT
Max Weber was born in 1864and he was the son of a wealthy merchant family and his father was prominent in the National Liberal Party at the time of Bismarck. The work of Max Weber has had very little influence in England, and in the age of the computer, shows little sign of having much influence in the future. This is not due to Weber's inadequacy: even those who show least understanding of his contribution to sociology usually pay him lip service. Weber naturally became associated with Troeltsch at Heidelberg, who had already produced something of a sociology of Christian social teaching, and who had shown very clearly the connection between Calvinist theology and capitalist ethics. Weber saw religious ideologies and organizations more clearly as a result of his Chinese studies. Weber's embarkation upon his comparative-historical studies may have followed from his desire further to underpin the causal proof of the relation between Protestantism and Capitalism.
