All over his work, Weber presents classifications and concepts that are,
whether he explicitly stresses it or not, idealtypes.
Rational behavior, the bureaucratic organization, charismatic authority,
even value-free science, or the Protestant ethic of the spirit of capitalism,
those are all idealtypes.
And they have all been extremely helpful
in generating interesting hypothetical suggestions.
Weber says that an idealtype should make sense.
It must not be intrinsically inconsistent.
It has to be [FOREIGN], everything must fit.
You could compare it to what computer gamers tell us about virtual reality.
In a good computer game, they say the virtual world must feel like a real world,
a universe where you feel at ease.
A world that, in principle, could exist.
Now when you construct a virtual reality model of the spirit of capitalism and
a virtual reality model of the Protestant ethic, you can try to combine the two.
And then you may come up with an interesting idea about
how they are interrelated.
And that idea can then be operationalized in hypothetical statements.
Statements that can be tested in empirical,
known virtual reality in the social world out there.