ABSTRACT
This review chapter not only addresses the influence of the computational sciences over the social sciences, but also those influences extending in the opposite direction. And this is especially true of sociology, where it is helpful to recognize the impact of methodological debates occurring at the time when Max Weber was attempting to lay down the foundations of modern sociology. Emerging from an active engagement in the German Methodenstreit debates, Weber emphasized the importance of motivation and purpose in human society. However, he insisted that these motives and purposes were socially determined. That is, his version of “methodological individualism” was fiercely anti-psychological and opposed in ontological terms to any simplistic social atomism. 1
