"No sociologist should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in his head and perhaps for months at a time"
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Weber is puncturing a fantasy that still haunts the social sciences: that big ideas arrive fully formed, delivered by genius and crowned with theory. His line drags sociology back down to the workshop floor. If you want to talk about society with authority, you don’t get to skip the tedious middle layer where claims are tested against stubborn detail. The provocation is in the phrasing: “should think himself too good” frames laziness as a moral vanity, not a scheduling problem. Age, status, and reputation are singled out as temptations to outsource the grunt work to juniors or to intuition.
The “tens of thousands” and “quite trivial” computations aren’t really about arithmetic. They’re about discipline: the repetitive mental accounting of cases, categories, exceptions, and confounds that turns an elegant hunch into a defensible argument. Weber is also hinting at sociology’s legitimacy crisis in his era. As the field fought to distinguish itself from armchair philosophy and from political sermonizing, he insists on a rigor that looks unglamorous precisely because it is.
There’s a deeper Weberian subtext: modernity is built on rationalization, on systems that run because someone, somewhere, does the counting. He’s warning sociologists not to romanticize their own role. If you want to analyze bureaucracies, markets, or institutions, you must be willing to mirror their painstaking logic. The quote flatters no one; it offers a hard bargain: intellectual authority is purchased in boredom, paid over “months at a time.”
The “tens of thousands” and “quite trivial” computations aren’t really about arithmetic. They’re about discipline: the repetitive mental accounting of cases, categories, exceptions, and confounds that turns an elegant hunch into a defensible argument. Weber is also hinting at sociology’s legitimacy crisis in his era. As the field fought to distinguish itself from armchair philosophy and from political sermonizing, he insists on a rigor that looks unglamorous precisely because it is.
There’s a deeper Weberian subtext: modernity is built on rationalization, on systems that run because someone, somewhere, does the counting. He’s warning sociologists not to romanticize their own role. If you want to analyze bureaucracies, markets, or institutions, you must be willing to mirror their painstaking logic. The quote flatters no one; it offers a hard bargain: intellectual authority is purchased in boredom, paid over “months at a time.”
Quote Details
| Topic | Work Ethic |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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