However, although Menger is quite critical of the way in which methodological inductivist essentialism applies inductivism to the theoretical social sciences, he nevertheless shares the basic idea that the empirical sciences are characterized by inductive methods. Accordingly, he believes that the empirical sciences start from certain observations or rather from absolutely certain and proven statements describing observations or personal experiences; that on that basis specific general statements or laws are inferred by content-enlarging and truth-preserving inferences; and that these laws provide the bases for an explanation of complex situations, processes and facts. Menger opines that this is the method and procedure of any empirical science i.e. Of the natural sciences as well as of the social sciences, which he undoubtedly ranks among them? Discussing the methods of the social sciences in the preface of the Grundsatze he accordingly explains