Introduction

Max Weber engaged psychophysics directly and in detail on several occasions: the methodological article “Research Strategy for the Study of Occupational Careers and Mobility Patterns in the Workforce in Large Scale Industry,” written for colleagues conducting a survey for the Verein für Sozialpolitik; the 1908/9 literature review “On the Psychophysics of Industrial Work,” which includes a case study; the 1909 review “On the Methodology of Social Psychological Questionnaires”; a reader's letter concerning Marie Bernays; and an intervention in the debate at the annual conference of the Verein für Sozialpolitik in autumn 1911.

These “psychophysical writings,” as Weber once described them, have long been neglected by Weber scholars. Either they are ignored altogether, or treated as part of a purely empirical interest in working conditions. To be sure, Weber began his career as an economist with an empirical study of the social condition of agricultural workers, which implied also an interest in the social condition of industrial workers. When the Verein für Sozialpolitik turned in earnest to this later question, it was natural that Weber should be involved. Yet it has been claimed that after the study was conceived Weber's interest in the topic waned. According to this view, the texts of 1908 and 1909 mentioned above represent a conclusion rather than a beginning. It is therefore understandble that until now they have played less of a role in the biography of Weber’s work than in history of emperical social research in general and of industrial sociology in particular.