Page "Max Weber" Paragraph 34

Weber saw religion as one of the core forces in the society.

His goal was to find reasons for the different development paths of the cultures of the Occident and the Orient, although without judging or valuing them, like some of the contemporary thinkers who followed the social Darwinist paradigm ; Weber wanted primarily to explain the distinctive elements of the Western civilisation.

In the analysis of his findings, Weber maintained that Calvinist ( and more widely, Protestant ) religious ideas had had a major impact on the social innovation and development of the economic system of the West, but noted that they were not the only factors in this development.

Other notable factors mentioned by Weber included the rationalism of scientific pursuit, merging observation with mathematics, science of scholarship and jurisprudence, rational systematisation and bureaucratisation of government administration and economic enterprise.

In the end, the study of the sociology of religion, according to Weber, focused on one distinguishing part of the Western culture, the decline of beliefs in magic, or what he referred to as " disenchantment of the world ".