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Record W2020013758 · doi:10.1177/14687950122232486

Was Max Weber a Selectionist in Spite of Himself?

2001· article· en· W2020013758 on OpenAlexaff
W. G. Runciman

Bibliographic record

VenueJournal of Classical Sociology · 2001
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicWeber, Simmel, Sociological Theory
Canadian institutionsTrinity College
Fundersnot available
KeywordsDarwinismProtestant work ethicEpistemologySociologyProtestantismPositive economicsSelection (genetic algorithm)ChinaPhilosophyLawEconomicsPolitical scienceCapitalismPoliticsComputer scienceReligious studies

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Despite Weber's explicit rejection in several of his writings of the Darwinian concepts of selection and adaptation, in his sociology of law he briefly discusses the emergence and diffusion of novel forms of behaviour in selectionist terms entirely consistent with the Darwinian paradigm. There is therefore reason to suggest that he could have advanced his ‘Protestant Ethic’ thesis in similar terms, and that if he had its merits and deficiencies would have been significantly easier to diagnose. So interpreted, the thesis is still inadequately supported by the evidence that he adduces in its favour. But a reformulated selectionist version directed to explaining the success of Protestant entrepreneurs in the 18th century is much more convincing, and can be supported by the evidence for what did (and didn't) happen in Scotland and China as well as continental Europe. Moreover, Weber's underestimation of China's economic achievements strengthens rather than weakens the reformulated version.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.007
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.005
Threshold uncertainty score0.019

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.007
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0030.020
Scholarly communication0.0050.012
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0030.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0020.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.031
GPT teacher head0.346
Teacher spread0.315 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations48
Published2001
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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Same venueJournal of Classical SociologySame topicWeber, Simmel, Sociological TheoryFrench-language works237,207