Abstract
Max Weber's methodological writings offered a model of singular casual analysis that anticipated key elements of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy of the social and cultural sciences. The model accurately portrayed crucial steps and dimensions of casual reasoning in the disciplines, outlining a dynamic and probabilistic conception of historical processes, counterfactual reasoning, and comparison as a substitute for counterfactual argument. Above all, Weber recognized the interpretation of human actions as a sub-category of casual analysis, in which the agents' visions of desired outcomes, together with their beliefs about how to bring them about, cause them to act as they do.