Professional Documents
Culture Documents
239-267
HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
The Argument
I am not the first to have noticed the unequal treatment accorded the different
parts of the monograph. In his review of the 1970 reprinting, for example, the
historian Charles Webster observed that "many parts of this dissertation have been
inexplicably overlooked, only the section concerned with the 'Puritanism-science'
hypothesis having achieved universal recognition" (1972, 94).
Indeed, in his preface to that reprinting, Merton himself noted, somewhat rue-
fully, that the great bulk of scholarly attention devoted to the monograph had gone to
the chapters on Puritanism, whereas he is rather "more partial to the section dealing
with economic and military influences on the spectrum of scientific work" because "it
exhibits a little more acumen than the preceding section in the formulation of
theoretical ideas and in the method of investigation" (1970, xii-xiii). Of course,
authors often disagree with others' judgments of their texts, and it is not always
apparent which makes the better case.
But this is scarcely the main reason why the marked attention paid to one part of
the monograph and the correlative neglect of the rest is problematic. For one thing,
the Merton monograph comprises two interconnected but often opposed theoretical
ideas: it holds that society and culture or social structure, on the one hand, and social
values and norms, on the other, help account for the institutionalization of scientific
activity in seventeenth-century England and for the particular directions it took. The
chapters focusing on Puritanism address the nature of the interplay between one part
of the environing culture and the emerging interest in science and support for it.
These provide what some like to characterize as an idealistic interpretation of history.
The chapters focusing on the economic and military realms address the nature of the
interaction of these aspects of social structure with foci of investigation or problem
selection within the sciences. They provide what some like to characterize as a kind
of materialistic interpretation of history. Emphasizing the one part of the monograph
and neglecting the other results in an incomplete and, I think, misleading account of
its theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions.3
Moreover, the nearly exclusive interest in the Puritanism-science hypothesis has
had a significant side-effect. It has resulted in disregard both of the theoretical
foundations of the work as a whole and of important theoretical themes and ideas
introduced in the neglected chapters, many of them still pertinent for the analysis of
problem choice in science. As one example, the important distinctions between
individual intentions that lie behind social action and its ramifying social conse-
quences, and between motivational and institutional levels of analysis simply dis-
appear with an exclusive focus on Puritanism and science. As another example, a
focus on the connections between religion and science alone obscures the generic
idea that science is interdependent in varying degrees with a variety of other social
of seventeenth-century natural philosophers about diverse influences on their work, as transcribed in
Birch's History of the Royal Society of London.
3
As Merton put it, "The importance of religion is primarily, though not exclusively, one of influencing
the degree of interest in science generally rather than one of canalizing research in certain directions" -
thus implying, of course, that the directions science took were influenced by other social forces as well
([1938] 1970, 207).
The Other Merton Thesis 241
The problematics of the neglected chapters are clear. Merton is principally interested
in accounting for "shifts in the foci of inquiry: from one science to another, and within
each of the sciences, from one set of problems to another" ([1938] 1970, ix). Chapter
3 sets out to "establish the phenomenon" (see Merton 1987) - that is, to demonstrate
that such shifts or changes actually did occur - while the later chapters (7-10) take up
the fundamental analytic question of what brought such shifts about. The last chapter
4
Notable exceptions are found in Shapin (1974, 1981, 1988) and Gillispie (1974).
5
See Gieryn 1988 and Shapin 1981,1988 for different but illuminating analyses of Merton's theoretical
intentions in the chapters analyzing religion and science. Shapin (1981,1988) is one of the few to take up
the social structural aspects of Merton's analysis of the legitimation of science as a social activity. On the
kindred question of why and how historians have misunderstood Merton's analysis of that relationship,
see Abraham 1983.
242 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
(11) examines the effects on scientific advance of such diverse social and cultural
factors as population density, social interaction, and communication in the scientific
community. The substantive analysis thus examines the conditions that made for
rapid scientific development and the specific directions it took.
The theoretical underpinnings of the neglected chapters - let alone of the entire
monograph - have not, to my knowledge, been examined in their own right. They
divide into two classes: those ideas that are sociologically generic - that is, those
applicable to social phenomena in many domains - and those that are sociologically
specific to the development of scientific knowledge and of science as an institution.
This division is of course analytical, since the two classes of ideas overlap in particular
cases. Still it serves to alert us to the differing degrees of generality of the underlying
ideas.
Both parts of the Merton monograph, the one linking science and religion and the
one analyzing the sources of shifting foci of attention among the sciences and of
problem choice within them, rest on the assumption that social institutions are
variously interdependent:
socially patterned interests, motivations and behavior established in one insti-
tutional sphere - say that of religion or economy - are interdependent with socially
patterned interests, motivations and behavior obtaining in other institutional
spheres - say that of science [and technology]. (Merton [1938] 1970, ix)
Moreover, the extent of that interdependence varies with time and place. Although
such institutions as the economy, religion, and science do not develop with full
autonomy, the extent of their interdependence is far from constant.6
The interdependence of institutions results in large measure from two basic social
facts: First, all individuals occupy multiple social statuses in different institutional
spheres and therefore have multiple commitments (Merton [1938] 1970, x). Second,
the consequences of actions in one institutional domain variously ramify into others.
In complex societies, people do not live their lives in watertight institutional compart-
ments; they may be simultaneously scientists and religious adherents, and be vari-
ously involved in economic life. What they do in one institution often has
consequences for what they do in others. The interdependence of institutions thus
makes for the possibility - not the necessity - that an interest in solving technical
problems arising out of economic and military requirements might affect scientists'
6
Much the same theme of institutional interdependence appears also in Merton's discussion of the
tensions between the institutional imperative of "disinterestedness" in science and the costs of scientists
neglecting the social and political consequences of their work ([1938] 1968). The idea that institutions are
necessarily interdependent was, of course, widely held among social scientists in the 1930s, but far more as
an abstraction or ad hoc interpretation than in the historically empirical terms developed in the Merton
monograph.
The Other Merton Thesis 243
that promise practical solutions, cannot account for the emergence of particular
problems - such as finding the longitude or the resistance of air to projectiles (in
ballistics) - on which a number of scientists focused their attention.
The connections between motivational and institutional levels of analysis turn out
to be complex." For as Merton emphasizes, many scientists of that time saw their
work as "an end in itself," exhibiting little or no interest in its possible practical
importance. Nevertheless, prevailing social and economic emphases lent esteem to
certain problems in science, and scientists having no interest in solving practical
problems were led to work on them. The significant point is that some of the scientific
inquiries of this period were oriented - not always with deliberate intent on the part
of individual scientists - toward subjects that were thought to be useful for technolog-
ical development (Merton [1938] 1970, 155).
These three generic ideas - institutional interdependence, the difference between
sources of social patterns and the bases of their persistence, and the differences
between the individual and institutional levels of analysis - are fundamental to
understanding the Merton monograph as a whole, both the well-known and the
neglected parts.12 They also prefigure later developments in Merton's sociology of
science - in particular, his continuing concern with problem choice in science.
nologic importance, are sufficiently emphasized to be selected for study though the
scientists are not necessarily cognizant of their practical significance. (Merton
[1938] 1970, 155)
In this conception, technological, economic, military, or transportation require-
ments help shape certain scientists' conceptions of what is important and worth
investigating, leading other scientists to work on those problems, apart from any
interest in solving practical problems. The idea that external forces can indirectly
shape scientists' problem choices, and thus the direction of science, by affecting
collective ideas of what constitutes scientifically significant problems, not only speci-
fied the more obvious idea that external forces become significant as scientists seek to
solve practical problems, it also exemplified Merton's view that external and internal
forces are intertwined and that their interactions need to be understood, rather than
our assuming that science is shaped wholly by one or the other.
The analytic problem, then, is how to develop a way of assessing the importance of
the two kinds of influence separately and, where possible, in their interaction. Thus
in Merton's concluding remarks to the chapter on science and military technique, he
observes:
From the foregoing account it seems probable that the needs generated by military
technology influenced the foci of scientific interests to an appreciable degree.
But the extent of this influence is still problematical. It is by IO means certain that
much the same distribution of interests would not have occurred, irrespective of
this external pressure. Many of these problems likewise flowed directly from the
intrinsic developments of science. In point of fact, however, a cumulating body of
evidence leads to the conclusion that some role must be accorded to these factors
external to science. (Merton [1938] 1970, 197-98)
The interrelation of external and internal influences appears also in the analysis of
problem choices as they are connected to social processes deriving from the structure
and culture of science. These include, as one type, the process of emulation - by
which increasing numbers of scientists become interested in studying particular
problems. Emulation serves to narrow the collective focus of attention onto a limited
set of problems.
Indeed, the mix of external and internal influences on shifts in foci of attention
among the sciences and scientists' problem choices within them is central to the
analysis of these subjects. Social and economic influences affect shifts in attention
among the sciences and also affect the general classes of problems that scientists
address. But these problems, in turn, suggest their own derivative problems. The
concentration of scientists on such derivative problems is then exhibited in short-
term fluctuations in foci of attention, which can therefore be attributed in large part
to internal influences. This formulation has external and internal influences oper-
ating both in tandem and in temporally consecutive phases. Together they set in
248 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
places where needs are greatest do not necessarily exhibit the most inventive activity,
and that the very idea of "needs" precipitating invention implies that they are clearly
identified - which often is not at all the case. The conceptual connection between
need and invention is thus respecified:
. . . need is not sufficient in itself to induce invention but acts as a precipitating and
directive influence. Moreover, it plays this role only if the cultural context is one
which places a high value upon innovation, which has a tradition of successful
invention and which customarily meets such needs through technological inven-
tion, rather than through other expedients . . . [In light of all this] it may be said
that, in a limited sense, necessity is the (foster) mother of invention. (Ibid., 158)
And Merton goes on to add, in a note, that "it is more often the case, as Veblen has
remarked, that invention is the mother of necessity" (ibid., n. 81).
All this suggests that there are grounds for claiming that the nearly exclusive focus
on the relations between Puritanism and science by commentators on the monograph
has resulted in neglect of this early substantive argument on foci of attention and
problem choice in science and, more to the point, in the neglect of an array of
theoretical ideas - some sociologically generic and some specific to science - that are
fundamental to understanding the author's intentions and the structure of his
argument.
In observing that "many parts of the dissertation have been inexplicably over-
looked," Charles Webster in effect introduces the problem of accounting for their
comparative neglect. Explanations of such occurrences as inattention or neglect can,
of course, verge on counterfactual history, with all its potential hazards. But wary of
these, I nevertheless suggest that the explanation of that neglect has as much to do
with the nature of the scholarly community and its distinctive interests at the time the
monograph appeared as it does with the emphases in the text or the author's own
announced preferences.
For one thing, it is clear that Robert Merton's special affinity for the neglected
chapters is not new. Back in the 1930s (between 1935 and 1939) he published five
papers based on the dissertation, but only one of the five ("Puritanism, Pietism and
Science", 1936) dealt with the connections of religion and science. The others
variously examined relations between science and the military (1935b), science and
the economy (1937a; [1939] 1968), and science, population, and society (1937b). For
another thing, in later years he was to be altogether even-handed in his treatment of
the two main parts of the monograph. His Social Theory and Social Structure, the first
edition of which was published in 1949, the second in 1957, and the third (enlarged
edition) in 1968, contains one chapter on Puritanism and science (a reprinting of the
The Other Merton Thesis 251
1936 paper) and another on science and the economy (a reprinting of the 1939
paper); no more and no less. Until the monograph was republished in 1970, as I. B.
Cohen has observed (1988, 582), Social Theory and Social Structure provided the
only access most readers had to its principal contents, since so few copies of the
original, published in Osiris, were available. Merton's even-handedness in this
regard is important. The author's own preferences or emphases can scarcely account
for the markedly unequal attention paid to the two parts of the monograph.
Was the text of the monograph entirely innocent?18 A Scotch verdict seems
indicated. One might argue that the text itself was responsible for the markedly
unequal attention paid its various parts. It is exceedingly rich in its wealth of themes
and subjects, possibly too rich to be readily and critically comprehended. It contains
what some might experience as a surfeit of "central messages."19 That surfeit may
have led readers to define a central message of the monograph for themselves,20
thereby producing a case of "preemption of scientists' attention" - a theme in the
production and reception of knowledge that has long interested Merton.21 He is fond
of quoting Kenneth Burke (1935, 70) to the effect that "a way of seeing is also a way
of not seeing - a focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B."22 Of prime
significance for problem selection and problem neglect, the preemption of attention
can have various sources, one of the more consequential being the ways in which
theoretical perspectives identify certain concepts and problems as worth working on
and others not.23 As a consequence, the preemption of attention makes for disconti-
nuity in the growth of knowledge (Zuckerman and Lederberg 1986) - as the case
under discussion illustrates - since much more scholarly work has been done in the
history and sociology of science on the connections of religion and science than on
18
Gerald Holton's penetrating challenge to this effect at the Jerusalem workshop in 1988 is responsible
for my addressing this question, although of course he has nc responsibility for my proposed answer to it.
19
In his analysis of Keynes' general theory and the possibility of its having been a multiple independent
discovery, the economist Don Patinkin (1983) suggests that contributors must clearly designate their
"central messages" for these messages to be understood, used in further inquiry, and attributed to those
who proposed them. The importance of scientific or scholarly contributions having a clear "central
message" should not be limited, of course, to multiple discoveries but holds equally for cases such as this.
20
Indeed, a sharp focus on one part of an article or book and the consequent neglect of other parts may
be a characteristic response of scientific and scholarly audiences - particularly, one would suppose, to
variegated articles or books. As Small's (1978) analysis of citation behavior demonstrates, publications
typically come to have a central meaning for their audiences, tending to be cited for that and that alone,
with the other contributions in the publication lost to view.
21
Merton noted the process of preemption of scientific or scholarly attention in the monograph without
specifically identifying it as a general pattern. He observes ([1938] 1970, 49) that "the attention paid [by
English anatomists] to thesefields[the organs concerned with the preparation and movement of the blood]
deflected interest from adjacent subjects. The shift of interest to physiology and microscopic anatomy led
to a decline of interest in surgery."
22
See for example Merton 1977, and 1984, (p. 264) on the Burke theorem and preemption of attention.
23
Preemption of scientists' and scholars, attention is presumably acute when the "dynamic density" (in
Durkheim's sense) of researchers is low - that is, when the number of researchers who might address a
problem is small relative to the number of problems identified as significant. Under such conditions, many
"good problems" are not addressed simply because other problems seem more promising at the time and
because scholarly or scientific manpower (and now womanpower) is relatively scarce.
252 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
the shaping of science by social, economic, and military demands, even though these
latter problems might have been addressed quite as definitely.
In his thoroughgoing analysis of the monograph, I. B. Cohen also addresses (from
another perspective) the question of the much greater attention paid to the chapters
on religion and science as compared with those on the economy, warfare, and
science. Says Cohen, "I believe that the answer lies in the direct challenge that 'the
Merton thesis' made to established opinion." He points out that at the time the
monograph appeared, science and religion were generally thought to be not only
"basically opposed" but also to have "nothing in common" (1990a, 97). "Merton was
saying, in effect, that the traditional view of religion as the direct enemy of science
should be abandoned, or at least seriously modified" (ibid., 98). In contrast, Cohen
notes, "historians of science and some scientists" appreciated the "close links"
between science and the "needs of warfare." Similarly, Marxist writings were respon-
sible for historians of science becoming
aware of the economic factors in scientific activity . . . Hence Merton's studies on
the economic motivation for scientific research . . . or the relations of science to
warfare could be seen as mere extensions, amplifications, or documentations of
positions already accepted . . . by historians and by scientists, if not by sociol-
ogists. (Ibid., 97-98)
For Cohen, then, the chapters on Puritanism and science were relatively novel and
unorthodox, thus evoking sustained attention. The chapters on shifting interest
among scientific fields and on the impact of economic and military concerns on
scientists' problem choices were nearly in accord with contemporary scholarly
opinion and therefore caused no great stir.24
Yet as Cohen has shown in great detail, the compatibility of religious belief and
commitment to science was an idea that, to a degree, could be considered a multiple
discovery - involving Merton, Dorothy Stimson, and Richard Foster Jones.25 This
reiteration may have led to its acceptance by the small band of scholars then at work
on religion, science, and literature in seventeenth-century England. By 1938 it
appears that the ideas now associated with the Merton thesis were taken as fully
established by a small group of specialists in the field. As Marjorie Hope Nicolson,
the historian of literature, put it in her review of the Merton monograph:
Mr. Merton's conclusions in regard to the relations between Puritanism and the
scientific spirit, while opposed to many of the older generalizations, are entirely in
24
Cohen proposes an additional reason for the comparative neglect. He points to stylistic differences
between the paper on Puritanism and the one on science and the economy. The former is written in "a
vigorous style, admirably suited to its topic, with its overtones of resounding Puritan sermons... By
contrast, the study of science and the economy begins in a minatory tone... [and] the conclusion lacks the
bell-ringing positive clarity of the article on Puritanism" (1990a, 98-100). Such stylistic differences
between the two principal sources might well have contributed to their differential reception.
25
It will be remembered that Stimson's brief paper appeared the year Merton completed his dis-
sertation (see Stimson 1935) and Jones' Ancients and Moderns (1936) appeared the same year as Merton's
"Puritanism, Pietism and Science."
The Other Merton Thesis 253
line with the conclusions drawn during the last few years by literary historians.
(Nicolson 1938, 8S4)26
However unorthodox the Merton thesis must have seemed at the time to historians
and sociologists generally, it soon became a view shared by those most familiar with
the subject.
One might go on to say that the ideas at the center of the neglected chapters were
also novel, except in Marxist circles. In his remarkably analytical paper "Under-
standing the Merton Thesis," Steven Shapin writes that
no historian now seriously maintains that the thematics and dynamics of scientific
activity (its "foci of interest") are unaffected by social and economic consider-
ations. When Merton wrote his thesis, this was not a common point of view,
especially outside Marxist circles. (1988, 604; my italics)
This was all the more so for the idea and the empirical evidence that problem choice
in science might be affected both directly and indirectly by external influences -
which was quite new at the time. One might say that both sets of chapters, those on
Puritanism and science and those on the links between science, the economy, and the
military, set forth central ideas that departed from a widely held canon but at the
same time were congenial to small cadres of scholars. If this is the case, their
differential novelty cannot fully account for the quite different reception of the two
major parts of the monograph.
Other text-related explanations of the differential reception also seem inadequate.
I shall itemize these briefly. First, Merton's impulse to quantitative analysis, his use
of statistics, graphs, tables, and charts in the monograph, which Joseph Needham
noted at the time as unusual among historians of science, may have been off-putting.
This may help account for neglect of the monograph as a whole; but it cannot account
for the differential treatment of its various parts. The quantitative analyses in the
chapters on foci of attention and problem choice would presumably have appeared
no more daunting than those in the chapters on religion and science. Both parts
display Merton's clear formulation of problems and his insistent efforts to bring
evidence (both qualitative and quantitative) to bear on them; neither demands great
quantitative acumen, as gauged by the standards prevailing at the time. Nor is there
reason to suppose that the hybridization of sociology and history in the monograph
accounts for the relative neglect of the one set of chapters. Sociology and history are
intimately linked in all the chapters (as I have suggested), so their combination can
hardly explain the differential response. Finally, it cannot be argued that the analysis
of the changing foci of attention in science and the significance of practical concerns
in problem choice were less plausible historically than the analysis of the relations
between religion and science. Rather, the opposite might have appeared to be so at
the outset. Moreover, more questions have since been raised about the historical
validity of the Puritanism-science link - no doubt because of the greater interest it
26
Cohen (1988, 580; 1990a, 92) was struck, as I was, by Nicolson's assessment.
254 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
evoked - than have been raised about the links between economic and military needs
and scientists' problem choices.
If neither the author nor the text are unambiguously responsible for the differential
response to its several major themes, what does account for it? The answer lies, I
think, at least as much in the character of the audience for the monograph (the
scholarly community) and its research agenda as in the text itself.27
Scientific ideas cannot take hold and develop without a receptive "thought collec-
tive . . . of persons mutually exchanging ideas or maintaining intellectual interaction
[which] provides the special 'carrier' for the historical development of any field of
thought" (Fleck [1935] 1979, 39). Thought collectives, akin to Price's "invisible
colleges" and the rhetoricians' "interpretive communities,"28 not only assess the
value of would-be new contributions but, more consequentially, make use of them
and build on them. For the Merton thesis, such a thought collective existed among
literary historians and historians of seventeenth-century science. It was small, com-
prising such scholars as Dorothy Stimson (1935), Richard Foster Jones (1932,1936),
and G. N. Clark (1937, 79-86), each of whom worked directly on the connections
between religion and science, as well as a slightly larger group of literary historians of
the seventeenth century, among them Marjorie Nicolson. Their judgments of the
worth of what came to be "the Merton thesis" would, in turn, legitimate it for the
larger community of scholars and scientists.29 They provided the kind of cognitive
constituency or thought collective that was needed for the Merton thesis, not simply
because the subject was of general interest to them but because they were actively
pursuing scholarly work related to it.
The chapters on shifts in interest among scientific disciplines and the role of
economic and military influences on scientists' foci of attention had no comparable
cognitive constituency, either ready-made or in formation. The analytical stance of
the neglected chapters was apt to be insufficiently materialist for Marxists and too
materialist (or "externalist") for non-Marxists. These chapters were surely too
critical of the materialist position to be acceptable to orthodox Marxist historians.
Moreover, Merton took pains to dissociate himself in his other writings from the
"unsound postulate . . . that socio-economic factors serve to account exhaustively
27
In assessing the reception of the monograph as a whole, I. B. Cohen (1990b, 81ft) points out that
there was "no clearly defined audience in 1938 for a study that aimed to delineate the relations of science
and technology to society in a historical setting." The number of historians of science was quite small at the
time, the number of scholars studying the social aspects of science and technology even smaller; and very
few sociologists exhibited any interest in these subjects, all the more since the latter were temporally
located in a century long past.
28
Although members of a "thought collective" share a "thought style" that, in Fleck's judgment,
"almost always exerts an absolutely compulsive force upon [their] thinking and with which it is not possible
to be at variance" (Fleck [1935] 1979,41), I am not proposing that the thought style characteristic of those
at work in the late 1930s on Puritanism and science was incorrigible; there is too much evidence of "socially
organized skepticism" finding frequent expression for this to have been so. On "invisible colleges," see
Price ([1963] 1986, chap. 3, especially pp. 76-81); on "interpretive communities" - networks of scientists
and scholars who share similar perspectives and to whom arguments are addressed - see Nelson 1987,427
and other essays in Nelson, Megill, and McCloskey 1987.
29
Cohen's detailed examination of the reviews of the Merton monograph leads him to conclude that it
"won the applause of a select and mixed company of cognoscenti, whose number was small" (1990a, 81).
The Other Merton Thesis 255
for . . . scientific activity" ([1939] 1968, 661; published initially in the "Marxist
journal" Science and Society). And of course the emphasis on the role of Puritanism
in the development of science in the remainder of the volume made it rather suspect
in Marxist circles.
To be sure, there were potential readers in 1938 - especially among such working
scientists as Needham, Bernal, and Huxley - whose perspectives were, in principle,
consistent with those presented in the neglected chapters. Yet Needham in his long
review of the monograph chose to say little about Merton's treatment of "the
powerful influence on science of armaments, navigation and mining" (1938, 571),
focusing instead on Merton's use of quantitative data and on the connections be-
tween religion and science.30 More to the point, aside from their own scientific
research, most of these scientists were then more interested in institutional reform
than in scholarship. They saw the social study of science mainly as a potential cure for
the ills of society. If they were sympathetic to the idea that the directions science
takes are influenced by practical concerns, most did not adopt it as a serious agenda
for their own inquiries.
So too among sociologists, but for different reasons. There was no thought collec-
tive to resonate to the neglected chapters. It is significant that it was a literary
historian, Marjorie Nicolson, who was asked to write the review of the book in the
American Sociological Review, the official journal of what was then the American
Sociological Society. True, the Marxist sociologist Bernhard J. Stern (1939) and the
non-Marxist historical sociologist Howard S. Becker (1942) also reviewed the book
in peripheral journals of sociology. Stern, whose scholarly interests and Marxist
commitments would draw him to the neglected chapters,31 was impressed by the
"excellent documentation of the nature of [the] interrelationship" between "econ-
omic developments and the growth of science and technology." Thus he wrote that
Merton "proved conclusively that pure scientists of the seventeenth century defined
their problems and focussed their research in terms of the practical interests and
needs of the new industries and commerce stimulated by capitalism" (1939, 262).
But Stern's main concerns were medicine and invention; and even had they not
been, a lone scholar does not a thought collective make. The eminent W. F. Ogburn,
who might also have been responsive to Merton's analysis, had quite a different
research agenda to pursue. He was chiefly interested in the effects of science and
technology on society and culture, rather that the converse,32 as developed most
notably in his concept of "culture lag" ([1922] 1950). In any event, Ogburn would not
30
As it happens, when Needham did cite Merton's work, he chose to focus on the connections of
Puritanism and science. His taken-for-granted view of the science-military-transportation-mining linkage
supports Cohen's contention that this was recognized by many students of the period. But Needham's
professedly Marxist views may have rendered him unaware of the extent to which others found such
linkages implausible or marginal.
31
In the same year that Stern reviewed the monograph, the journal of which he was a founding editor,
Science and Society, published Merton's paper "Science and the Economy in Seventeenth-Century
England."
32
But Ogburn was of course interested in the possible cultural sources of invention. See the basic paper
by Ogburn and Thomas (1922) on the "inevitability" of invention.
256 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
have been attracted to Merton's historical analysis. Becker, for his part, takes his
(positive) review as an opportunity to attack Ogburn's "crude epiphenomenalism re
the role of ideas in social change" (1942,110), thus implying a difference in perspec-
tive, to say the least, between Ogburnian and Mertonian analysis. Apart from Stern,
most sociologists then interested in science and technology were concerned with their
social consequences rather than with the effect of social and cultural contexts on the
emergence and cognitive foci of modern science.33
A good part of the explanation for the differential reception of the two central
themes of the Merton monograph seems to lie, then, in the presence in the late 1930s
of an established thought collective for the one theme and the absence of such a
thought collective for the other. However small in number, there were others at work
on questions related to the role of Puritanism in the establishment of modern science,
an aggregate of interested and critical scholars and scientists ready to respond
seriously to these ideas. By contrast, there was no semblance of a thought collective
for Merton's analysis of shifts in attention devoted to the differentiating scientific
disciplines or for his analysis of the influence of economic and military needs on the
problem choices of scientists. Only in recent years has the phenomenon of societal
influence on scientists' problem choices begun to be examined in the sociology and
history of science.
constitute in the aggregate the directions the sciences take at any given time, as the
monograph proposed. Furthermore, the problem choices of scientists determine the
content of individual research programs, ultimately shaping the character of their
contributions to scientific knowledge. Most important and characteristic of the
Mertonian thought style, the subject of problem choice is taken as a "strategic
research site . . . that exhibits the phenomena to be explained or interpreted to such
advantage and in such accessible form that it enables the fruitful investigation of
previously stubborn problems and the discovery of new problems for further inquiry"
(Merton 1987,10-11). Thus problem choice has become the occasion for examining
a variety of questions at both the structural and the individual levels in the social
organization of science, the development of scientific knowledge, and their relation
to pertinent social and cultural contexts. This is surely not the place to review in
detail the fifteen or more papers in which Merton addresses the problem of problem
choice. But a sampling will suggest that some themes introduced explicitly in the
monograph continue to crop up again in later work, while others have emerged out of
an evolving research program.34
[1945a] 1968. "The Bearing of Sociological Theory on Empirical Research": Here,
Merton lays out the various classes of work that come under the general rubric of
theory and notes that theory understood as general orientation "facilitat[es] the
process of arriving at determinate hypotheses" (p. 142) while theory understood in
its systematic sense provides the rationale for prediction and thus for further
empirical inquiry.
[1945b] 1968. "The Sociology of Knowledge": By 1945, Merton was noting that "the
'Copernican revolution' in this area of inquiry consisted in the hypothesis that not
only error or illusion or unauthenticated belief but also the discovery of truth was
socially (historically) conditioned" (p. 513). Thus various studies dealing with
sociocultural influences on the formulation of problems in science are pertinent, to
say the least:
"Increasingly, it has been assumed that the social structure does not influence
science merely by focusing the attention of scientists upon certain problems for
research. [Various studies] have dealt with the ways in which the cultural and social
context enters into the conceptual phrasing of scientific problems." (Ibid., 539-40)
[1948a] 1968. "The Bearing of Empirical Research on Sociological Theory": Here
Merton examines the other direction of the theory-research relationship and
directs particular attention to the role of serendipity - "unanticipated, anomalous
and strategic" data - in recasting theory and, of course, in provoking further
inquiry. Given his own predilection for unanticipated, anomalous, and strategic
observations, it is not surprising that he centers on their role in leading certain
types of phenomena to become problematic.
34
As we have seen, Merton published a series of papers in the 1930s that examine the role of practical
economic, military, and transportation needs in influencing problem choices. These are not included in the
sampling presented here, nor are several other papers on the problem of problem choice (see Merton
[1965] 1985, 1970, 1972, 1977).
258 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
others in the course of their work and having their attention drawn to particular
problems and ideas by socially and intellectually accentuated interests, and how
they are bound to the future by the obligation inherent in their social role to pass
on an augmented knowledge and a more fully specified ignorance." ([1963] 1973,
376).
Merton has returned since to the importance of specified ignorance in setting future
research agendas for individual scientists and for the science collectives at large.
1963. "Resistance to the Systematic Study of Multiple Discoveries in Science": As
the title implies, this paper examines the diverse reasons for the no more than
intermittent research attention paid to the phenomenon of multiple discoveries,
which for long periods was not defined as a significant problem for systematic
inquiry and was not studied systematically - a case of problem neglect as an aspect
of problem choice.
[1963] 1982. "Basic Research and Potentials of Relevance": Merton returns here to
the now familiar theme of the necessity to differentiate between intentions and
outcomes, motives and consequences, in scientific inquiry.
To be sure, the purposes of investigators greatly affect the actual conduct and
outcome of the investigation . . . Nevertheless, in the behavior of scientists, as
with human behavior generally, subjective purpose and obj ective consequence are
analytically separate, coinciding at times and differing at times. Just as inquiries
aimed at fundamental knowledge have repeatedly turned up unsuspected applica-
tions, so inquiries aimed at application have, though perhaps less often, turned up
unsuspected understandings of uniformities in nature and society. (Pp. 214-15)
Just so. The focus here is on ways of thinking about the difference between
contemporary basic and applied research, and the rationales provided for them;
but as we have seen, the foregoing observations were taken to hold also for Boyle,
Hooke, and certain of their colleagues.
1984. "Socially Expected Durations I: A Case Study of Concept Formation in
Sociology": The slow, indeed exceedingly slow, evolution of the concept and
problem of "socially expected durations" is taken as a case in point of the
developing specification of scientific problems. The long neglect of this problem is
"yet another instance" of the pattern, in intellectual development, of preemption
of attention. Here, a shift in Merton's research program led to "[a] changed angle
of vision entail[ing] a new way of seeing that brings part of the formerly neglected
observation into focus" (p. 279). As I have noted earlier, the preemption of
attention as a generic process in science is intimated in the 1938 monograph and
examined further in Merton's Episodic Memoir (1977).
1987. "Three Fragments from a Sociologist's Notebooks: Establishing the Phenom-
enon, Specified Ignorance, and Strategic Research Materials": The title is enough
to signal the relevance of this piece for problem choice: "Establishing the Phenom-
enon" is a prerequisite for knowing whether there is an authentic problem;
260 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
"Specified Ignorance" "is the express recognition of what is not yet known [about
a phenomenon] but needs to be known in order to lay the foundation for still more
knowledge" (p. 7); and the identification of "Strategic Research Materials" is
central both to the clear definition of problems and to decisions on how to
investigate them.
In press (with R. C. Merton). "Some Unanticipated Consequences of the Reward
System in Science: A Model of the Sequencing of Problem Choices": Differing in
style from earlier work but kindred in substance, this most recent piece, written in
collaboration with the economist Robert C. Merton, develops a model of the
temporal ordering and allocation of scientists' problem choices and returns to a
theme identified in the 1938 monograph - the processes by which problem choices
by aggregates of scientists become self-augmenting.
The subject of problem choice has served a variety of purposes in Merton's own
evolving research program. At the outset, it provided a site for theoretical analysis of
the interaction of science with its environing social, cultural, and economic contexts,
and of the joint influences of external and internal forces on the cognitive behavior of
scientists. Problem choice has also provided occasion for studying the interactions of
science and technology, and the implications of the reward system of science for the
behavior of scientists, as individuals and as collectivities. It has appeared repeatedly
in his studies of scientific precepts and scientific practice and the connections be-
tween the two. It is perhaps too much to say that Merton has been obsessed with the
problem of problem choice, but not too much to say that it has been a subject to
which he has had a decided affinity, one he has mined for various theoretical purposes
in elucidating the conviction that it is a central feature of the scientific enterprise, at
both the structural and individual levels.
Merton is hardly alone in the conviction that problem choice is central. Especially in
recent years, problem identification and problem choice have become a focus of
attention for a number of sociologists and philosophers of science.35 Some of them
draw explicitly on the Merton monograph; others do not. Indeed, several scholars
writing from the perspective of the social construction of scientific knowledge have
explicitly rejected those theoretical strands of the monograph that would seem
compatible with, even congenial to, their views.
35
For a few examples, see Busch, Lacy, and Sachs 1983; Fujumura 1987, 1988; Gieryn 1978, 1980;
Knorr-Cetina 1981; Messeri 1988; Star 1983; Sullivan, Barboni, and White 1981; Ziman 1987; Zuckerman
1979. There is also a cluster of papers examining the impact of patterns of funding on the directions and
pace of research - see Cohn 1986; Hufbauer 1986; Tatarewicz 1986; and Gilman 1986. Among philos-
ophers of science, see Laudan 1977 and Nickles 1981 for two examples. See also Bohme et al. 1983 for the
perspective of the Starnberg group, which has emphasized the consequences of applications of science for
emerging research programs in such fields as cancer research, agricultural chemistry, fluid mechanics, and
fermentation.
The Other Merton Thesis 261
Thomas Gieryn's explanation for this seeming paradox focuses on the competition
for cognitive standing in the sociology of science. He holds that "an emphasis on
empirical, or even theoretical, continuities with Merton detracts from the presumed
novelty of the relativist/constructivist programme" (1982, 284). From quite a differ-
ent perspective, Pierre Bourdieu comes to precisely the same conclusion (1990,5-6).
And in some measure this may be so. Of course many - but not all - of those adhering
to the relativist perspective have sharply separated themselves from what they
describe as the Mertonian tradition in the sociology of science.
However, there may be other reasons for the reluctance of the relativist/construc-
tionist sociologists to identify affinities between their own work and the Merton
monograph. I agree with Harry Collins,36 one of the most thoroughgoing of the
relativists, that their research program differs from Merton's.37 Collins observes that
even Merton's programmatic statements . . . do not begin to be mistakable for an
anticipation of the modern programme unless Merton intended to say not just that
the conditions for the existence of scientific practice are social and not just that the
direction and focus of attention of science are in part socially determined, but also
that the very findings of science are in part socially determined. (1982, 302)38
It seems clear that Merton did not wish to say more than what Collins thinks he
wished to say. Indeed, Merton did stop short of claiming that the "findings of science
are socially determined."39 Thus the thesis in the chapters we have been examining is
not altogether inconsistent with the current constructionist position; but of course it
is far from being identical with it.
The same is true when it comes to the views associated with Barnes, Shapin, and
others in the Edinburgh group. They emphasize the impact of scientists' social,
36
I a m not inclined to agree with David Bloor, w h o claims that " t h e cause of hesitation to bring science
within the scope of a thorough-going sociological scrutiny is lack of nerve or will. It is believed t o b e a
foredoomed enterprise" (1976, 2.). Rather, as Collins observes, Mertonian researchers have been con-
cerned primarily with the nature of the scientific community rather than with the nature of human
knowledge (1982, 300); but it needs to be added that they have also taken up problems in the sociology of
scientific knowledge, though not along lines consistent with constructionist views. See, for example, S.
Cole (1975; 1983), Gieryn (1978; 1980), Hargens (1988), Messeri (1988), Mullins (1975), and Zuckerman
(1988, 541-46) on "structural studies" in the sociology of scientific knowledge.
37
This is also more or less Woolgar's view. He observes that "Merton's early work could be said in one
sense to have concerned social processes of scientific investigation, although current writers would
probably argue that this is stretching the applicability of that phrase to the bursting point. This is not what
they had in mind at all!... A thoroughgoing sociology of scientific knowledge must concern itself, for
example, with the way in which social interests affect the construction and use of the minutiae of esoteric
mathematical proofs, or with the way in which particular knowledge constructs constrain scientific action"
(1980, 240).
38
According to Collins, "The relativist programme tries to do analyses that imply that in one set of
social circumstances 'correct scientific method' applied to a problem would precipitate result p whereas in
another set of social circumstances 'correct scientific method' applied to the same problem would
precipitate result q where, perhaps, q implies not-p" (1982, 302).
39
Merton unambiguously rejected what he considered "vulgar materialism" ([19,39] 1968, 661), es-
pecially Hessen's "economistic" efforts (1938,120). He neither claimed that particular scientific discover-
ies were the product of external influences nor did he attribute small-scale changes in the foci of scientific
interests to such influences. Nonetheless, he would write in 1945, in his essay "The Sociology of
Knowledge" ([1945b] 1968), that "the social and cultural context enters into the conceptual phrasing of
scientific problems," as noted earner.
262 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
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264 HARRIET ZUCKERMAN
Department of Sociology
Columbia University