Scientific Change,Emerging Specialties,and Research Schools

See, e.g., Small Henry and Griffith Belver C. , “The structure of scientific literatures i: Identifying and graphing specialties”, Science studies, iv (1974), 17–40; and Small Henry Griffith Belver C. Stonehill Judith A. and Dey Sandra , “The structure of scientific literatures ii: Toward a macro- and microstructure for science”, ibid., iv (1974), 339–65. Cf. Crane Diana , Invisible colleges: Diffusion of knowledge in scientific communities (Chicago, 1972).

Collins Harry M. , “The tea set: Tacit knowledge and scientific networks”, Science studies, iv (1974), 165–86.

See Drake Stillman , Galileo at work: His scientific biography (Chicago, 1978); Gruber Howard E. , Darwin on man: A psychological study of scientific creativity (New York, 1974); Holmes Frederic L. , Claude Bernard and animal chemistry: The emergence of a scientist (Cambridge, Mass., 1974); Kevles Daniel J. , The physicists: The history of a scientific community in modern America (New York, 1978); and Kohlstedt Sally Gregory , The formation of the American scientific community: The American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1848–1860 (Urbana, Ill., 1976).

Chart I is based on the following sources: Morrell J. B. , “The chemist breeders: The research schools of Liebig and Thomas Thomson”, Ambix, xix (1972), 1–46; Geison Gerald L. , Michael Foster and the Cambridge School of Physiology: The scientific enterprise in late Victorian society (Princeton, 1978); Servos John W. , “The knowledge corporation: A. A. Noyes and chemistry at Cal-Tech, 1915–1930”, Ambix, xxiii (1976), 175–86; Crosland Maurice , The Society of Arcueil: A view of French science at the time of Napoleon I (London, 1967); Fox Robert , “The rise and fall of Laplacian physics”, Historical studies in the physical sciences, iv (1974), 89–136; Holton Gerald , “Fermi's group and the recapture of Italy's place in physics”, in The scientific imagination: Case studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 155–98; and Hanaway Owen , “The German model of chemical education in America: Ira Remsen at Johns Hopkins (1876–1913)”, Ambix, xxiii (1976), 145–64.

Morrell , op. cit. (ref. 4), 3–7.

Ravetz Jerome , Scientific knowledge and its social problems (London, 1971), esp. 223–33.

See esp. Mulkay Michael J. , “Three models of scientific development”, Sociological review, xxiii (1975), 509–26 and 535–7.

Dean Colin , “Are serendipitous discoveries a part of normal science? The case of pulsars”, ibid., xxv (1977), 73–86.

Law John and Barnes Barry , “Areas of ignorance in normal science: A note on Mulkay's three models of scientific development”, ibid., xxiv (1976), 115–24.

Mulkay Michael J. , “The model of branching”, ibid., xxiv (1976), 125–33.

On the other hand, see Mulkay Michael J. , op cit. (ref. 7), 522–3, where a brief effort is made to argue that Kuhn's ‘scientific revolutions’ are only a special case of the model of branching! Mulkay makes this claim by asserting that his model would predict “revolutionary upheaval” when “radical innovations” were introduced into “stable” research networks: “in networks where availability of significant problems and of professional recognition is declining; in networks where movement of researchers in and out is difficult, for example, due to the need for esoteric technical skills; and in networks where cognitions are highly precise and where, consequently, the possibility of gradual intellectual redefinition is limited.” But this seems to me a virtual restatement of Kuhn's position that scientific revolutions take place within stable networks (‘disciplinary matrices’?) in an atmosphere of conflict, and I fail to see how a situation that is characterized by an absence of branching into new areas of ignorance can be considered a “special case” of the model of branching. In my view, Mulkay does not go far enough when he concedes that his model is broadly compatible with Kuhn's. For me, one of the leading virtues of the branching model is precisely the promise it holds for efforts to refine and extend our understanding of ‘normal science’ in fully institutionalized groups over the past century or some part of it.

See, e.g., Mulkay M. J. Gilbert G. N. , and Woolgar S. W. , “Problem areas and research networks in science”, Sociology, ix (1975), 187–203; and Woolgar S. W. , “The identification and definition of scientific collectivities”, in Perspectives on the emergence of scientific disciplines, ed. for Parex by Lemaine Gérard (The Hague, 1976).

The critique of Mulkay's model by Law and Barnes , op. cit. (ref. 9), seems to me to argue against this assumption at least implicitly. Insofar as I can penetrate its highly abstract quality, a similar reservation about the presumed link between social and conceptual innovation seems to find expression in Whitley Richard D. “Components of scientific activities, their characteristics and institutionalization in specialties and research areas: A framework for the comparative analysis of scientific developments”, in Determinants and controls of scientific development, ed. by Knorr Karin (Dordrecht, Holland, 1975), 37–73, esp. p. 69.

Merton Robert K. , “Multiple discoveries as strategic research site [1963]”, in The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations, ed. with intro. by Storer Norman W. (Chicago, 1973), 371–82, esp. pp. 374–6.

Merton Robert K. , “The sociology of science: An episodic memoir”, in The sociology of science in Europe, ed. by Merton R. K. and Gaston Jerry (Carbondale, Ill., 1977), 3–141, on pp. 75–76.

Edge David O. and Mulkay Michael J. , Astronomy transformed: The emergence of radio astronomy in Britain (New York, 1976), 457. Cf. Holton , op. cit. (ref. 4).

Cf. Geison , op. cit. (ref. 4), xiv.

See Lemaine Gérard Lecuyer Bernard-Pierre Gomis Alain and Barthelemy Claude , Les voies du succès: Sur quelques facteurs de la réussité des laboratoires de recherche fondamentale en France (2 vols, CNRS, Paris, 1973), esp. ii, 204–43.