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Abstract

In lectures and correspondence during the latter decades of the 19th century, Max Weber entered the debate over the ‘sciences’ (that is, branches of knowledge including the ‘natural’ and ‘social’ sciences), arguing their differences were of values, context and theoretical orientation rather than subject matter. Weber’s involvement culminated, many decades later, in The Methodology of the Social Sciences, in which he announced only a ‘hairline’ separates ‘science from faith’ (1949:110). Weber’s position was not entirely unique, nor was it the first thesis on the nature of knowledge; yet it has significance because it can be placed in late 19th century Europe, a period of significant rivalry between intellectuals, each seeking to foster the institutionalization of a form of knowledge as a distinct discipline within the university system. Between 1860 and 1870, a new generation of physiologists sought to redefine the nature of science (Veit-Brause, 2001:40); in the 1890s, various groups campaigned for the recognition of a new discipline of biology (Pauly, 1984); and others claimed for psychology the subject of mental