Stone was a major advocate of the new social history—that is using the methods of the social sciences to study history and expanding the target of study to include larger and larger populations. Stone argued that using quantitative methods to assemble data could lead to useful generalizations about different periods in time. However, Stone never argued in favor of creating "laws" of history in the manner of Karl Marx or Arnold J. Toynbee. In Stone's view, the most one could do was to create generalizations about a particular century and no more. Stone was very much interested in studying the "mentalité" of people in the early modern period along the lines of the "Annales" School, but Stone rejected Fernand Braudel's geographical theories as too simplistic. Along the same lines, Stone was very fond of combining history with anthropology and offering "thick description" in the manner of Clifford Geertz.