VALUES AND RESEARCH
Weber’s position on the place of values in social research is far more ambiguous. Weber did believe in the ability to separate fact from value, and this view could be extended to the research word: “investigator and teacher should keep unconditionally separate the establishment of empirical facts… and his own personal evaluations,I,e, his evaluation of these facts as satisfactory or unsatisfactory” (weber,1903-1917/1949:11). He often differentiated between existential knowledge of what is and normative knowledge of what ought to be (weber,1903-1917/1949). For example. On the founding of the German sociological association, he said: “the association rejects, in principle and definitely, all propaganda for action-oriented ideas from its midst.” Instead, the association was pointed in the direction of the study of “what is, why something is the way it is, for what historical and social reasons” (roth,1968:5).