Max Weber nsIn existographies, Max Weber (1864-1920) (IQ:170|#323) [RGM:133|1,500+] (Gottlieb 1000:806) (HCR:8) (CR:61) was a German sociologist, Goethean philosopher, oft cited last person to know everything and considered the "last universal genius of social science", noted for his so-called Weberian elective affinities theory, namely the use of Goethe’s human elective affinity theories in the development of his social theories. [1]

Education
In 1878, Weber, age 14, began reading Goethe. [2] Weber, in fact, read Elective Affinities in the classroom as a young student, hiding it behind his textbook. [3] His first published use of the term “elective affinities” occurs in 1904. (Ѻ)

Overview
In his 1905 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber proposed that there is an elective affinity between important ideological, economic, and social interests, conditions, forces, and processes constituting the development of rational capitalism. [5]

In a general sense, Weber, supposedly, was one of the first to promote linkages between the natural sciences, human behavior, economics, and cultural development in his 1920 book The Theory of Social and Economic Organization. [4]

Scottish sociologist Andrew McKinnon in 2010 claims to have done the first systematic analysis of Weber's usage of "elective affinity" in his work and theories. [6]

Affinity (inner) Weber
A 2001 glossary definition of Weber's conception of an inner elective affinity. [8]
Translation issues
English translators of Weber’s work, to note, more often than not, have tended to render the German term “Wahlverwandtschaft”, meaning elective affinity, as either "correlation, relationship, or bond", thus unintentionally acting to distance or cut off Weber’s original chemical meaning from his work. [3]

Quotes | On
The following are quotes on Weber:

“The study of human experience glitters with imaginative and insightful approaches—Marxist modes of production, Levi-Straussian structures, Weberian verstehen, the Batesonian mind, and many others, all of which share one characteristic: they pertain to no common universe; most are untranslatable one to another.”
Richard Adams (1988), The Eight Day (pg. xiv)

Weber seems to me very much a man of a particular time. A man of whom it has been said (as it has of others) that he was the last person to know everything of importance that was to be known. A nonsensical idea, of course, but one which point to the extraordinary breadth of his interests in sociology, religion, economics, politics, history, music, and much else besides.”
— Christopher Grey (2005) [7]

Quotes | By
The following are quotes by Weber:

Power is the probability of realizing one’s goals, even against the resistance of others.”
— Max Weber (1922), Economy and Society [9]

References
1. (a) Thims, Libb. (2007). Human Chemistry (Volume Two), (preview), (ch. 10: "Goethe's Affinities", pgs. 371-422; Weber’s sociological affinities, pg. 441). Morrisville, NC: LuLu.
(b) Author. (1962). “Max Weber: the Scholar as Hero” Columbia University Forum (quote: “Max Weber the 'last universal genius of social science' is today the least known of the great thinkers”, pg. 31). Columbia University Press.
(c) Grey, Christopher. (2005). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations ("last person to know everything", pg. 21). Sage.
2. Herbert, Richard, H. (1978). “Max Weber’s Elective Affinities: Sociology within the Bounds of Pure Reason”, (abs), American Journal of Sociology, 84, 366-85; In: Max Weber: Critical Assessments 2 (pgs. 193-210), by Peter Hamilton, Taylor & Francis, 1991.
3. Dusek, Val. (1999). The Holistic Inspirations of Physics: the Underground History of Electromagnetic Theory (Elective Affinities, pgs. 221-23). Rutgers University Press.
4. (a) Weber, Max. (1920). The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (intro by Talcott Parsons, 1947). Simon & Schuster.
(b) Wallace, Thomas P. (2009). Wealth, Energy, and Human Values: the Dynamics of Decaying Civilizations from Ancient Greece to America (pg. x). AuthorHouse.
5. (a) Weber, Max. (1930). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. London: Allen and Unwin.
(b) Mainprize, Steve. (1996). “Elective Affinities in the Engineering of Social Control: the Evolution of Electronic Monitoring.” Electronic Journal of Sociology.
6. (a) McKinnon, Andrew. (2010). “The Sociology of Religion: the Foundations”, Weber and “elective affinity”, in: The New Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Religion (pgs. 41-51). Wiley.
(b) McKinnon, Andrew. (2010). “Elective Affinities of the Protestant Ethic: Weber and the Chemistry of Capitalism” (abs), Sociological Theory, 28(1):108-26.
7. Grey, Christopher. (2005). A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book about Studying Organizations (pg. 21). Sage.
8. Weber, Max. (2013). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (translator: Stephen Kalberg) (elective affinity, 6+ pgs; affinity (elective, inner), pg. ixxvii). Routledge.
9. (a) Weber, Max. (1922). Economy and Society. Selections reprinted in: From Max Weber (editor: H. Gerth and C.W. Mills) (pg. 180). Oxford University Press.
(b) Rigney, Daniel. (2001). The Metaphorical Society: an Invitation to Social Theory (pgs. 87-88). Rowman & Littlefield.

Further reading
● Thomas, J.J.R. (1985). “Ideology and Elective Affinities” (abs) Sociology, 19 (1): 39-54.
● Kent, S. (1983). “Weber, Goethe, and the Nietzschean Allusion: Capturing the Source of the ‘Iron Cage’ Metaphor”, Sociological Analysis, 44(4):297-310.
● Kemple, T.M. (2001). “The Trials of the Homo Clausus: Elias, Weber, and Goethe on the Socio-genesis of the Modern Self: in Norbert Elias and Human Interdependencies (pgs. 137-48, McGill-Queens University Press.
Further reading

External links
Max Weber – Wikipedia.

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