The German sociologist who invented the tools — ideal types, verstehen, the disenchantment of the world, the Protestant ethic — through which the modern social sciences understand rationalization, bureaucracy, and the relationship between ideas and economic life.
Weber asked the question that no one else asked clearly enough: why capitalism? Not just why did markets emerge — but why did a specific form of economic rationality, oriented toward systematic profit through methodical labor, appear in northern Europe and nowhere else? The answer he found in Protestant theology remains the most provocative thesis in social science.