Max Weber always sought to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the history of culture, and to do so, he demanded an objectivity of knowledge within the historical conditions in which a given event occurs. For him, sociology must be comprehensive, that is, it must strive to discern the meaning of social acts, in which various types of actions are distinguished according to their motivation: rational, affective, traditional, etc.
In line with this, Weber offers us in this book a precise analysis of two specific situations: "The Objective Knowledge of Social Sciences and Politics" and "The Meaning of Freedom of Evaluation in the Sociological and Economic Sciences." Both essays were published in 1904 and 1917, respectively, when the journal Archiv für sozialwissenschaft und sozialpolitik was edited by Wierner Sombart, Max Weber, and Edgar Jaffe.