Merton Revisited or Science and Society in the Seventeenth Century

Osiris iv (1938) 360–632. It is much to be desired that this important issue—containing in addition A. C. Klebs' Incunabula scientifica et medica—might be speedily reprinted. In what follows I use the term “social” (etc.) where “socio-cultural”, “socio-economic” or the like might be more exact, for the sake of simplicity. Definition of the exact nature of the external influence is not material to this consideration.

Merton , loc. cit., 413.

Burtt E. A. , Metaphysical foundations of modern physical science (1924, repr. London 1949); Clark G. N. , The seventeenth century (Oxford, 1929, 1947), The later Stuarts (Oxford, 1934); Jones R. F. , Ancients and Moderns (St. Louis, 1936); Ornstein Martha , The role of scientific societies in the seventeenth century (pr. pr. 1913, Chicago 1928 etc.); Stimson Dorothy , “Puritanism and the ‘new philosophy’ in 17th century England”, Bulletin of the Institute for the History of Medicine, iii (1935) 321–334; Whitehead A. N. , Science and the modern world (New York, 1931). Burtt (p. 211) asserts that Newton was “practical”; this is associated with his over-emphasis of Newton's positivism. Miss Stimson briefly links Puritanism and the Royal Society once more in Scientists and amateurs (New York, 1948), 34–5.

Science at the cross-roads (London, 1932), 147–212. Merton, 565, draws attention to G. N. Clark's criticism of this essay in Science and social welfare in the Age of Newton (Oxford, 1937) but it is not wholly clear to me that Merton's monograph is not, in less measure, liable to some of the same criticisms. In particular, Merton hardly stresses the significance of the intrinsic interest of science upon which Clark (86–91) properly insists.

Merton , 402.

Ibid., 452.

Ibid., 435.

Ibid., 479–480. Merton mentioned Pascal's renunciation of science but not Barrow's.

Ibid., 434.

Colie Rosalie L. Miss (Light and enlightenment, a study of the Cambridge Platonists and the Dutch Arminians, Cambridge, 1957, 4) remarks: “fundamentalist sects tended to fear research into the natural sciences … to fear that the study of the phenomena of natural science might prove, as it traditionally was viewed, as the easy sliding pathway to atheism, or at least to scepticism”.

Ibid., 452.

Westfall Richard S. , Science and religion in seventeenth century England (New Haven, 1958), 7. In a footnote the author adds, “Although I believe that some connection between Puritanism and early modern science (in England, presumably) has been established, the definitive treatment of it remains to be written.”

Merton , loc. cit., 12.

Pelseneer Jean , “Les Influences dans l'Histoire des Sciences”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, Année I (1948) 349. Cf. idem. “L'Origine Protestante de la science moderne”, Lychnos, 1946–7.

Lilley S. , “Social Aspects of the History of Science”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, 2^e Année (1949) 376–443. My quotations are from pp. 435–7.

Other estimates make the relative proportion of pure scientific activity much higher; the subjective element in such classification is inevitably quite large. If one weighed books on pure science against those on technology the preponderance of the former would be enormous.

Merton , 563–5.

Critical problems in the history of science (Madison, 1959), 27–28.

Houghton Walter E. Jr. , “The History of Trades”, Journal of the history of ideas, ii (1941) 50. The distinction between ‘virtuoso’ and ‘scientist’ is clearly drawn by the same writer in “The English Virtuoso in the Seventeenth Century” (ibid., iii (1942) 51–73 and 190–219) e.g. p. 194: “In a word, the virtuoso stops at the very point where the genuine scientist really begins. …” Now many Fellows of the Royal Society would properly be described as virtuosi, which did not mean that they were scientists, natural philosophers, “physiologists” or “naturalists”.

Merton , loc. cit., 540–541.

Three of Zilsel's articles appeared in early volumes of the Journal of the history of ideas. For a bibliography and comment, see that Journal, reprinted in Roots of scientific thought (ed. Wiener Philip P. Noland Aaron , New York, 1957), 281.

“The Genesis of the Idea of Scientific Progress”, Journal of the history of ideas, vi (1945) 346; Roots of scientific thought, 273.

Farrington Benjamin , Francis Bacon, philosopher of industrial science (New York, 1949).

Ibid., 141.

Cf. Hall A. R. , Ballistics in the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1952); here the strength of the genetic, intellectual current as compared with external pressure is quite obvious.

For Merton's own discussion of ballistics see loc. cit. 544–557. Walter E. J. (“Warum gab es im Altertum Keine Dynamik”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, Année 1 (1948) 363–382) argued that the invention of artillery was the cause of the early modern interest in dynamics. He made no reference to the medieval (pre-gunpowder) tradition of dynamical and kinematical inquiry.

Nef John W. , Cultural foundations of industrial civilization (Cambridge, 1958), 63–4.

Merton , loc. cit., 407–9.

It is of course a necessary corollary that unappreciated work such as Mendel's fall under the “unripeness of time” provision.

Merton , loc. cit., 434.

Koyré Alexandre , Études galiléennes (Actualites scientifiques et industrielles 852–4, Paris, 1939). 6–7. This thought leads Koyré to an excessively stringent critique of Bacon (6, n. 4), indeed his Platonist, anti-empiricist thesis is here expressed in an extreme and vulnerable form.

Ibid., 9, italics added.

Collingwood R. G. , The idea of Nature (Oxford, 1945); Galaxy Books, 1961, 94. This book was largely written in 1933–4 and revised in 1939; it would probably have had a greater impact upon historians of science if its publication had been less long delayed.

Butterfield Herbert , The origins of modern science (London, 1949), viii.

Pelseneer Jean , “Les Influences dans l'Histoire des Sciences”, Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences, Année I (1948) 348–353. For a far stronger attack on Duhem's historiography of Galileo and its exponents, see Aldo Mieli “Il Tricentario dei ‘Discorsi e Dimostrazioni Matematiche’ di Galileo Galilei”, Archeion, xxi (1938).

Merton , loc. cit., 436. It is fitting to draw attention to the distinction that Merton here made between the genetic element in scientific discovery and the “cultural animus” which was so favourable to science in the seventeenth century.

Especially The science of mechanics in the middle ages (Madison, 1959) in which all the other bibliographical allusions of this paragraph may be explored, if necessary.

An article of my own has touched on this matter; cf. Critical problems in the history of science, ed. Clagett Marshall (Madison, 1959), 3–23.

Lilley S. , “Cause and Effect in the History of Science”, Centaurus, iii (1953) 59.