In 1905 Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, one of the foundational texts of modern sociology and of economic sociology, in particular, and also one of the first to take an interpretive approach to human participation in social and economic systems. His treatise documents the approaches that peoples of various religious beliefs have taken to labor, leisure, wages, and the moral significance of worldly professions since the advent of the industrial revolution and the development of global capitalism. Weber's work theorizes that the development of novel economic systems is
Weber's work can be seen as an early criticism of Karl Marx's entirely materialistic conception of sociological progress, in that he suggests that religious conviction contributed to the development of economic systems and not the other way around. Moreover, Weber was admirably modest in his claims, acknowledging that his was not the definitive understanding of economic development. However, because of the ways social science has developed in the intervening century, Weber's work is more notable as a spur to further inquiry than as an enduring source of scientific truth. Additionally, Weber's thinking was hamstrung by the immaturity of sociological methodology in his time: statistical analysis, data collection, and mathematical economics were all in their theoretical infancy at the time of his writing. Given The Protestant Ethic's scientific obsolescence, it serves as an enduring example of how sociological analysis has changed since its inception and how it continues to do so.