If adequacy in respect to meaning is lacking, then no matter how high the degree of uniformity and how precisely its probability can be numerically determined, it is still an in comprehensible statistical probability Statistical uniformi ties constitute understandable types of action, and thus constitute sociological generalizations only when they can be regarded as manifestations of the understandable subjective meaning of a course of social action.10i While statistical correlations may sensitize us to the possibility of a causal link, such a link can only be established if we can satisfy our selves that there is a connecting sequence of motivations. All this suggests that Verstehen is to be understood not as an alternative to positivism and the scientific method, as it is sometimes said to be, but as a corrective against the too mechanical application of this method