Editors' Note.

From a certain point of view one can see why Fritz Ringer's "Max Weber's Methodology: the Unification of the Cultural and Social Sciences," would be an attractive book. It appears to be comprehensive. It appears to explain a large number of obscure and difficult texts in short sentences and in terms of relatively simple ideas even diagrams with arrows. Yet it is not too simple. There is plenty of technical language, and there are references to specialized texts in a number of disciplines in German and English, both on Weber and on issues in the philosophy of science and social science, including a good deal on some thinkers who arc seldom discussed in the usual literature on the social sciences. The book thus appears to have the best of several worlds something new and challenging but nevertheless introductory about Weber's methodological writing, together with something that is also relevant to such issues of the day as relativism and the divide between the interpretive and causal approaches to social science. The jacket contains blurbs which call it such things as a major work for the history of the social sciences and invaluable, by people who have familiar names and ought to know.