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Science and the Social Order

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

Robert K. Merton
Robert K. Merton*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Forty-three years ago Max Weber observed that “the belief in the value of scientific truth is not derived from nature but is a product of definite cultures.” We may now add: and this belief is readily transmuted into doubt or disbelief. The persistent development of science occurs only in societies of a certain order, subject to a peculiar complex of tacit presuppositions and institutional constraints. What is for us a normal phenomenon which demands no explanation and secures many ‘self-evident’ cultural values, has been in other times and still is in many places abnormal and infrequent. The continuity of science requires the active participation of interested and capable persons in scientific pursuits. This support of science is assured only by appropriate cultural conditions. It is, then, important to examine those controls which motivate scientific careers, which select and give prestige to certain scientific disciplines and reject or blur others. It will become evident that changes in institutional structure may curtail, modify or possibly prevent the pursuit of science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 5 , Issue 3 , July 1938 , pp. 321 - 337
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1938

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Footnotes

1

Read at the American Sociological Society Conference, December 1937. The writer is indebted to Professor Read Bain, Professor Talcott Parsons, Dr. E. Y. Hartshorne and Dr. E. P. Hutchinson for their helpful suggestions.

References

Notes

2 Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Wissenschaftslehre, Tübingen, J. C. B. Mohr, 1922, 213; cf. P. A. Sorokin, Social and Cultural Dynamics, New York, American Book Co. 1937, esp. II, Chap. 2.

3 Cf. R. K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England, Osiris History of Science Monographs, Bruges, 1938, Chap. XI.

4 This summary judgment will be tested in a monograph which the writer is preparing in collaboration with E. Y. Hartshorne. This study will deal with the place of science in the modern world in terms of the analysis introduced in this paper.

5 See Chapter III of E. Y. Hartshorne, The German Universities and National Socialism, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1937, on the ‘purge’ of the universities; cf. Volk und Werden, 5, 1937, 320-1 which refers to some of the new requirements for the doctorate.

6 This is one of many phases of the introduction of a caste system in Germany. As R. M. MacIver has observed, “The idea of defilement is common in every caste system.” Society, New York, Farrar & Rinehart, 1937, 172.

7 Cf. the official organ of the SS, the Schwarze Korps, July 15, 1937, 2. In this issue Johannes Stark, the president of the Physikalisch-Technischen Reichanstalt, urges elimination of such collaborations which still continue and protests the appointment of three university professors who have been ‘disciples’ of non-Aryans. See also Hartshorne, op. cit., 112-3; Alfred Rosenberg, Wesen, Grundsätze und Ziele der Nationalsozialistischen Deutschen Arbeiterpartei, München: E. Boepple, 1933, 45 ff.; J. Stark, “Philipp Lenard als deutscher Naturforscher”, Nationalsozialistische Monatshefte, 71 (1936), 106-111, where Heisenberg, Schrödinger, von Laue and Planck are castigated for not having divorced themselves from the ‘Jewish physics’ of Einstein.

8 The data upon which this statement is based will be published shortly by Dr. Hartshorne.

9 Cf. Wissenschaft und Vierjahresplan, Reden anlässlich der Kundgebung des NSD-Dozentenbundes, January 18, 1937; Hartshome, op. cit., 110 ff.; E. R. Jaensch, Zur Neugestaltung des deutschen Studentums und der Hochschule, Leipzig, J. A. Barth, 1937, esp. 57 ff. In the field of history, for example, Walter Frank, the director of the Reichsinstituts für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands, “the first German scientific organization which has been created by the spirit of the national-socialistic revolution,” testifies that he is the last person to forego sympathy for the study of ancient history, “even that of foreign peoples,” but also points out that the funds previously granted the Archaeological Institute must be re-allocated to this new historical body which will “have the honor of writing the history of the National Socialist Revolution.” See his Zukunft und Nation, Hamburg, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1935, esp. 30 ff.

10 Ernst Krieck, Nationalpolitische Erziehung, Leipzig, Armanen Verlag, 1935 (19th Printing), 8.

11 The Nazi theoretician, Alfred Baeumler, writes: “Wenn ein Student heute es ablehnt, sich der politischen Norm zu unterstellen, es z. B ablehnt, an einem Arbeits- oder Wehrsportlager teilzunehmen, weil er damit Zeit für sein Studium versäume, dann zeigt er damit, dass er nichts von dem begriffen hat, was um ihn geschieht. Seine Zeit kann er nur bei einem abstrakten, richtungslosen Studium versäumen.” Männerbund und Wissenschaft, Berlin, Junker & Dünnhaupt, 1934, 153.

12 Hartshorne, op. cit., 106 ff.; cf. Wissenschaft und Vierjahresplan, op. cit., 25-6, where it is stated that the present “breathing-spell in scientific productivity” is partly due to the fact that a considerable number of those who might have received scientific training have been recruited by the army. Although this is a dubious explanation of the present situation, a prolonged deflection of interest from theoretical science will probably produce a decline in scientific achievements.

13 Professor Thiessen in Wissenschaft und Vierjahresplan, op. cit., 12.

14 For example, chemistry is highly prized because of its practical importance. As Hitler put it, “we will carry on because we have the fanatic will to help ourselves and because in Germany we have the chemists and inventors who will fulfil our needs.” Quoted in Wissenschaft und Vierjahresplan, op. cit., 6; et passim.

15 This is clearly put by Reichswissenschaftsminister Bernhard Rust, Das nationalsozialistische Deutschland und die Wissenschaft, Hamburg, Hanseatische Verlagsanstalt, 1936, 1-22, esp. 21.

16 Limitations of space forbid a thorough discussion of the concept of “ethos” in this connection. Suffice it to say that ethos refers to an emotionally toned complex of rules, prescriptions, mores, beliefs, values and presuppositions which are held to be binding upon the scientist. Some phases of this complex may be methodologically desirable, but observance of the rules is not dictated solely by methodological considerations. The ethos of science, as every other social code, is sustained by the sentiments of those to whom it applies. Transgression is curbed by internalized prohibitions and by disapproving emotional reactions which are mobilized by the supporters of the ethos. Once given an effective ethos of this type, resentment, scorn and other attitudes of antipathy operate almost automatically to stabilize the existing structure. This may be seen in the current resistance of scientists in Germany to marked modifications in the content of this ethos. The ethos may be thought of as the “cultural” as distinct from the “civilizational” component in science. Cf. the writer's “Civilization and Culture,” Sociology and Social Research, 21, 1936, 103-113.

17 Cf. Baeumler, op. cit., 145. Also Krieck (op. cit., 5-6), who states: “Nicht alles, was den Anspruch der Wissenschaftlichkeit erheben darf, liegt auf der gleichen Rang- und Wertebene; protestantische und katholische, französische und deutsche, germanische und jüdische, humanistische oder rassische Wissenschaft sind zunächst nur Möglichkeiten, noch nicht erfüllte oder gar gleichrangige Werte. Die Entscheidung über den Wert der Wissenschaft fällt aus ihrer ‘Gegenwärtigkeit', aus dem Grad ihrer Fruchtbarkeit, ihrer geschichtsbildenden Kraft. …”

18 Thus, says Ernst Krieck: “In the future, one will no more adopt the fiction of an enfeebled neutrality in science than in law, economy, the State or public life generally. The method of science is indeed only a reflection of the method of government.” Nationalpolitische Erziehung, 6. Cf. Baeumler, op. cit., 152; Frank, Zunft und Nation, 10; and contrast with Max Weber's “prejudice” that “Politik gehört nicht in den Hörsaal.”

19 H. Levy, The Universe of Science, New York, Century Co., 1933, 189.

20 Baeumler, Männerbund und Wissenschaft, 152.

21 It is of considerable interest that totalitarian theorists have adopted the radical relativistic doctrines of Wissenssoziologie as a political expedient for discrediting ‘liberal’ or ‘bourgeois’ or ‘non-Aryan’ science. An exit from this cul-de-sac is provided by positing an Archimedean point: the infallibility of der Führer and his Volk. (Cf. General Hermann Goering, Germany Reborn, London, Mathews & Marrot, 1934, 79) Politically effective variations of the ‘relationism’ of Karl Mannheim (e.g. Ideology and Utopia) have been used for propagandistic purposes by such Nazi theorists as Walter Frank, Krieck, Rust, and Rosenberg.

22 For example, Pareto writes: “The quest for experimental uniformities is an end in itself.” See a typical statement by George A. Lundberg. “It is not the business of a chemist who invents a high explosive to be influenced in his task by considerations as to whether his product will be used to blow up cathedrals or to build tunnels through the mountains. Nor is it the business of the social scientist in arriving at laws of group behavior to permit himself to be influenced by considerations of how his conclusions will coincide with existing notions, or what the effect of his findings on the social order will be.” Trends in American Sociology, (edited by G. A. Lundberg, R. Bain and N. Anderson), New York, Harper, 1929, 404-5. Compare the remarks of Read Bain on the “Scientist as Citizen,” Social Forces, 11, 1933, 412-15.

23 A neurological justification of this view is to be found in E. D. Adrian's essay in Factors Determining Human Behavior, Harvard Tercentenary Publications, Cambridge, 1937, 9. “For discriminative behavior … there must be some interest: yet if there is too much the behavior will cease to be discriminative. Under intense emotional stress the behavior tends to conform to one of several stereotyped patterns.”

24 Of course, this does not constitute a movement opposed to science as such. Moreover, the destruction of machinery by labor and the suppression of inventions by capital have also occurred in the past. Cf. R. K. Merton, “Fluctuations in the Rate of Industrial Invention,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 49, 1935, 464 ff. But this movement mobilizes the opinion that science is to be held strictly accountable for its social effects. Sir Josiah Stamp's suggestion may be found in his address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Aberdeen, 6 Sept. 1934. Such moratoria have also been proposed by M. Caillaux (cf. John Strachey, The Coming Struggle for Power, New York, 1935, 183), by H. W. Sumners in the U. S. House of Representatives, and by many others. In terms of current humanitarian, social and economic criteria, some of the products of science are more pernicious than beneficial. This evaluation may destroy the rationale of scientific work. As one scientist pathetically put it: if the man of science must be apologetic for his work, I have wasted my life. Cf. The Frustration of Science (ed. by F. Soddy), New York, Norton, 1935, 42 et passim.

25 Possibly because humanitarian sentiments are more deeply rooted among them or for other unascertained reasons, English scientists have especially reacted against the “prostitution of scientific effort to war purposes.” Presidential addresses at annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, frequent editorials and letters in Nature attest to this movement for “a new awareness of social responsibility among the rising generation of scientific workers.” Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Sir John Orr, Professor Soddy, Sir Daniel Hall, Dr. Julian Huxley, J. B. S. Haldane and Professor L. Hogben are among the leaders of the movement. See, for example, the letter signed by twenty-two scientists of Cambridge University urging a program for dissociating science from warfare (Nature, 137, 1936, 829). These attempts for concerted action by English scientists contrast sharply with the apathy of scientists in this country toward these questions. The bases of this contrast might profitably be investigated. In any event, although this movement may possibly derive from the sentiments, it may serve the function of eliminating one source of hostility toward science in democratic regimes.

26 Robert K. Merton, “The Unanticipated Consequences of Purposive Social Action,” American Sociological Review, 1, 1936, 894-904.

27 Frank H. Knight, “Economic Psychology and the Value Problem,” Quarterly Journal of Economics, 39, 1925, 372-409. The unsophisticated scientist, forgetting that scepticism is primarily a methodological canon, permits his scepticism to spill over into the area of value generally. The social functions of symbols are ignored and they are impugned as ‘untrue'. Social utility and truth are once again confused.

28 Charles E. Merriam, Political Power, New York, Whittlesey House, 1934, 82-3.

29 For a general discussion of the sacred in these terms, see E. Durkhcim, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, London, Allen & Unwin, n.d., 37 ff., et passim.