Abstract

The individual disciplines of the social sciences appear to be divided as if they were concerned with different objects but they are united through many of the questions which they are asked to answer. Although the individual disciplines were about to be institutionally separated at the time of the historical school major proponents of the historical method like Schmoller were still able to combine the different approaches in a unified framework The psychology of individuals establishes a link between social behaviour and economic interests. The intuuitive method allows to understand analogies between different manifestations of the lifestyle in a nation. There have to be coherent ethical norms for individual behaviour; social integration and economic cooperation. The article describes how Schmoller came to treat ethics as a unifying principle of sociological and economic research, starting from observations on the unifying power of culture in Germany in the classical period. Lessons are drawn for modern interdisciplinary research by examining examples of topical research projects.