Quantitative analysis of historical material as the basis for a new cooperation between history and sociology (1980)

There is no shortage of programmatic statements on systematic cooperation between historians and sociologists, but actual joint work has rather been impeded by just such programs. This is not a unique experience, as programs for interdisciplinary work between other disciplines often fared no better1. Interdisciplinarity as a sustained activity requires certain conditions quite different from those emphasized in many of the programmatic statements. It is the contention of this paper that these conditions now exist for the quantitative analysis of historical materials. So far, the most important contributions to sociology were the work of scholars who as individuals were able to synthesize knowledge from sociology and history. Among the several scholars from the founding period of sociology such as Lorenz v. Stein, Robert v. Mohl, Gustav Schmoller, Werner Sombart, Joseph Schumpeter , Max Weber stands out as a scholar with a universal knowledge by the standards of his time who translated historical material into a basis for a systematic sociology2. Contrary to Weber's reception in the USA and from there subsequently in other countries, his colleagues in Germany saw in him more of a social historian than of a sociologist; von Wiese' s reference to Max Weber in his short "History of Sociology" as a promising empiricist and economic historian is representative3. As the knowledge of historical detail accumulates such a synthesis as an individual accomplishment becomes an obvious impossibility safe for a selectivity and level of abstraction from details that earn such attempts the epiteton "tour de force". In such uses of universal history as by Herbert Spencer, or Oswald Spengler, or Pitirim Sorokin historical material is not really the object of an analysis but illustra-