Although lots of scholars have been so far writing many theses on the works of Max Weber, we do not find any thesis which contains a methodological argument about Max Weber's study of cities (“Typologie der Städte”).
Reading the Note appended to the end of his essay by the title of “The Agrarian Institutions of Antiquity” in an encyclopedia (“Agralverhaltnissen in Alterturn”), I raised a methodological problem concerning his study of cities.
Moreover, Max Weber wrote a letter, dated of 21 st June, 1914, to G. von Below, which tells us a new methodological trial of the study of cities.
Putting my interpretation on these contents stated above, I think the study of cities would be connected methodologically with the problem of the causal explanation of history (in Weber's terminology, “objektive Möglichkeit and adäquate Verursachung in der historischen Kausalbetrachtung”).
It seems to me that the complicated form of “The City” (“Typologie der Städte”) was caused by his interim process of the study, in which, I think, he was trying to apply a new methodological way to the comparative study of cities on the basis of the logic of the causal explanation of history.
From this viewpoint, I scrutinized methodologically his study of cities, and at the same time, reconsidered his statements of the logic in his dispute with Miyer (“Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre”).
As the result of these examinations, I built up these hypotheses as follows ;
1. The works of Weber's study of cities are situated at his methodological turning point, from where he started to replace his historical approach by his original sociological approach.
2. In connection with the logical base of its situation mentioned above, I understand that the logical relation between the theory and history is explained by the thought schemata of “the objective possibility and the adequate judgment in the historic causal observation”. And that the character of the theory concerning the social science is suggested in this thought schemata.