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International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences
Edited by David L. Sills. The Macmillan Co & The Free Press, NY, 1968. Vol. 13. pp. 92100
THE SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE
by Bernard Barber
If the sociology of knowledge is defined as the part of sociology that studies the nature of and
relations between different types of idea systems, on the one side, and the relations between
these idea systems and a variety of institutional (or social-structural) and personality factors, on
the other, then the sociology of science is one part of the sociology of knowledge. It is the part
that specializes in defining the nature of scientific ideas and in describing their relations both to
other kinds of ideas (e.g., ideological, philosophical, aesthetic, religious) and to various
institutional and personality factors. Parsons (1951, especially chapter 8) has given us what is
still the best analytic definition of idea systems in general and their several specialized subtypes,
although further analysis and operational specification of his classification are necessary.
The sociology of science, as is the case with all sociology, general or special, is primarily
interested in the construction of a set of highly generalized, systematic, and relatively exhaustive
concepts and propositions of relationship. In this enterprise it uses data from all historical periods
and all cultures, since its main concern is not with history as such, but with establishing
sociological concepts and propositions. The history of science, although it always should use
such explicit sociological concepts and propositions, often does not, preferring its traditional,
less examined, and frequently common-sense ways of treating its materials. In either case, the
history of science, both advertently and inadvertently, may be productive of materials or even of
new concepts and propositions for the sociology of science, but this is not its essential task.
Thus, the sociology of science and the history of science overlap but do not coincide.
The sociology of science, finally, is interested both in fundamental scientific ideas themselves
and in the application of these fundamental ideas, or of more empirical ideas, to technology. In
its study of technology, again, the sociology of science uses both historical and contemporary
data, drawn from a variety of cultures, regardless of the original purpose for which these data
were collected, so long as they serve its primary goal of constructing a system of analytic
concepts and propositions.
The social nature of science.
One of the basic working assumptions of structural-functional theory in sociology is that man's
behavior in society is a response to certain functional problems that he confronts in his nonsocial
and social environments. On this assumption, sociology sees man's scientific behavior as his
response to the functional problem created by his need to have adequate adjustive knowledge of
the physical, biological, and social aspects of the empirical world. Such knowledge is
indispensable for some form of adjustment to that world in its three essential and different
aspects. Everywhere, as archeology, ethnology, history, and sociology have severally
demonstrated, man in society has a certain amount of this scientific knowledge. The amount, of
course, varies a great deal among societies. In other words, science, as Malinowski recognized
(1916-1941), is a matter of degree, with some societies having only a relatively small amount
and others having a great deal more. This, indeed, sets some of the essential problems for the
sociology of science. For it is not only the universal occurrence of at least a small amount of
scientific knowledge, but also the patterns of variation in the degree of development of such
knowledge in different societies, and variations at different stages in the evolution of a single
society, that the sociology of science has undertaken to explain.
In order to explain the degree of development of science considered as a complex whole, it is
necessary to distinguish its component cultural, social, and psychological parts, for each of these
can develop at somewhat different rates in different social situations. It is useful to define at least
four general components of science as a whole, each of which has a measure of autonomy:
substantive scientific ideas; scientific methodology, including both ideas and instruments;
scientific roles; and motivational and reward systems for scientific roles. Let us consider, again
because this sets important problems that the sociology of science has been trying to explain,
how each of die components varies along certain dimensions.
Substantive scientific ideas vary along three dimensions: of generality, or abstractness, as it is
also often called; of systematization; and of exhaustiveness for the relevant aspects of the
phenomena. We may say that the more abstract, the more systematic, and the more nearly
exhaustive a set of substantive scientific ideas is, the greater the degree of its scientific
development. Among the interesting problems that the sociology of science tries to explain is the
quest-Ion of why the physical sciences on the whole have developed more rapidly in all three
respects than have -the biological sciences and why these, in turn, have developed more rapidly
than the social sciences. Within each of these broad sectors of science, moreover, further
variation in the degree of development of specialized subsciences poses similar problems for
explanation. For example, the more rapid recent development of economics than of political
science or sociology can be explained, in part, by the greater accessibility of data on price
phenomena than of data on people's political and social norms and actual behavior. This greater
accessibility is due, in turn. and again in part, to the more pressing felt needs that governments
and business firms have for price data.
Knowledge about the ideas and instruments (or technology) that make up scientific methodology
also varies in its degree of development. It is clear that modern science has made great advances
over earlier science in the sophistication of its knowledge about such essential methodological
matters as the character of concepts and classifications, the logic of comparison and inference,
and the functions of contrived and natural experimentation. Modem science is also at a great
advantage over earlier science in the degree of its access to ordering and measuring facilities.
Mathematics is, of course, the most important of such facilities, and its development has been of
very great moment in the closely related development of all the sciences, although, again, to
varying degrees among the several sciences, for interesting sociological reasons. In addition to
mathematics, such instruments as thermometers, high-speed electronic computers, and a
thousand others have contributed significantly to the advances of the sciences. Both the
development of these measuring facilities and their adoption by the several sciences are
important focuses for research in the sociology of science. Since they may develop sometimes as
a direct result of changes in scientific ideas, but also sometimes independently, methodological
ideas and instruments have various types of relationships with substantive scientific ideas. When
they develop to some extent independently, as in the cases of the telescope or the computer, for
example, methodological ideas and instruments may at certain times play the leading part in the
development of a whole sector or subsector of science. Or again, it is an important sociological
fact about the prospects of the social sciences that their ability to borrow a great deal of the
methodological sophistication developed in the other sectors of science is a key asset for their
own development.
There is also considerable variation among societies in the degree of differentiation and
specialization of social roles for engaging in the many types of scientific behavior, in the
proportion of members of the society engaged in these roles, in the kinds and amounts of support
given to these roles, and in the degree of institutionalization of scientific roles. The sociology of
science has been much concerned with these essential problems of the social organization or role
component of science, so much so that we shall take them up below, in a separate and detailed
discussion.
Finally, motivational and reward systems for scientific roles also vary among and within
societies. They differ in the type of rewards, in the strength of motivation, and in the degree of
diffusion of adequate incentives throughout the population as a whole. Again, we shall consider
this matter more fully below.
The development of science
Viewed in the long perspective, science shows a history of continuity and cumulation from the
earliest prehistory of man to the present. However, this history has been marked by quite
different rates of development in different times and places. It is this unevenness in its progress,
viewed in terms of shorter perspectives, that calls for explanation by the sociology of science. As
the sociology of science has itself made progress, a few basic principles of explanation have
come to appear sound. One is the principle that no single cultural, social, or psychological factor,
such as religion or economic forces, can account for the growth of science as a whole or any of
its components or subsciences. Another such point is that not even any single combination of
factors, such as the religious and the economic, or the political and the educational, is sufficient
for the tasks of the sociology of science. This is not to say that there are not some combinations
of factors more favorable than others for certain kinds of specific development in science, as our
discussion of the Protestant ethic will illustrate. There definitely are such favorable
combinations, and the sociology of science has improved its ability to discover them by
accepting the principle that certain types and rates of development may come from one set of
factors (or one set of values of these factors taken as variables) and that other types and rates
may come from a different set of factors (or a different set of variables-values).
The following discussion will consider some of the major factors that affect the development of
science. They exert their influence on science always in combination, and the relative weight of
the influence of each may vary in different specific instances.
Structural and cultural differentiation.
The greater the degree of structural differentiation in a society, that is, of the specialization of
roles between the major institutional sectors and within them as well, the more favorable the
situation for the development of science. Greater structural differentiation provides the necessary
situation not only for a variety of highly specialized scientific roles but also for their highly
specialized ancillary and supporting roles in other institutional sectors.
Besides role differentiation, differentiation within culture, that is, in the various systems of ideas
in society, is also favorable to the development of science. For example, as Charles Gillispie
(1960) has shown, the development of what he calls "the edge of objectivity" of scientific ideas
has increased as these ideas have progressively been differentiated from moral ideas about man's
place in the universe. The more that values, ideologies, aesthetic ideas, and philosophical ideas
are distinguished both from one another and from substantive scientific ideas, the easier it is to
see the special problems of each and to develop each and all of them.
Value systems.
Certain values which the modern world tends to take for granted, but which have not existed in
many past societies, certainly in nothing like the same degree, are much more favorable to the
development of science than are their opposites. The high value the modern world puts on
rationality as against traditionalism, on this-worldly activities as against other-worldly activities,
on libertarianism as against authoritarian-ism, on active striving as against passive adaptation to
the world, and on equality as against inequality—all these values support the development of the
several components of science. Sometimes the support is direct, as in the case of the values of
rationality and this-worldly interest, values which are especially powerful in combination, as
they are in the modern world. Libertarianism is essential for academic freedom, which is one
kind of important foundation for scientific progress. Sometimes the support from values is
indirect, as when the value of equality increases the amount of social mobility and thus helps to
select better talent for scientific roles.
Instrumental needs.
Scientific knowledge is power, that is, power to adjust more or less satisfactorily to the nonsocial
environment and to the internal and external social environment. Some scientific discovery and
technological innovation, then, is a response to immediate instrumental needs for adjustment to
what are defined as dangerous and harsh environments. Certainly this must have been an
especially large influence on the development of science in the early stages of human society,
when every bit of scientific knowledge was of great instrumental importance in a threatening and
severe physical and social environment. But even powerful modem industrial societies respond
strongly to their instrumental needs for science. Whatever their values in regard to science, they
feel an urgent need to use it to strengthen their national defense, promote industrial and
agricultural growth, and improve the health of their populations. Some scientists deplore this
"exploitation" of science, that is, this encouragement of science "not for science's own sake." But
the instrumental needs of even already powerful societies are defined by their citizens as more
important under some circumstances than the value considerations that are preferred by scientists
and by those who share the values that support science directly. Finally, the nonindustrial or
underdeveloped societies of the present also push the acquisition of science for urgent
instrumental needs, to cope with "the revolution of rising expectations" in their populations.
Economic factors.
A variety of economic structures, needs, and resources, often combined with one or more other
social factors, have had very large direct and indirect influences on the development of science.
There is no blinking this fact, no matter how much some scientists may think it stains the
"purity" of science and regardless of whether one thinks some Marxist sociologists of science
have exaggerated it. Only a few of the myriad effects of economic activities on science can be
given in illustration here. As Merton has shown (1936, 1939), in the case of seventeenth-century
England, for example, the growing maritime interests, both commercial and naval shipping, were
in need of more reliable techniques of navigation. The existing techniques included neither good
chronometers nor any sure way of determining longitude at sea. These economic and militarypolitical needs were a direct stimulus, through prizes offered for discoveries and inventions, to
basic discoveries in astronomy and on the nature of the spring. Or again, earlier, in sixteenthcentury Europe, economic needs for more powerful methods of pumping water out of mines than
were provided by the existing Archimedean screw pumps led to work by Evangelista Torricelli
and Vincenzo Viviani on the relations between atmospheric pressure and water-level. On the
basis of this work, successful suction pumps for industrial use were constructed. But this
scientific work also led to the invention of the barometer by Torricelli, to the creation of a
vacuum by Otto von Guericke, and to a whole host of scientific experiments and results with the
so-called "air pump" by Robert Boyle and his colleagues in the newly founded Royal Society.
This example shows how economic needs, science, and technology affect each other in complex
and often mutually beneficial ways.
In the modem world, both industrial organizations and governments in all societies have
provided many kinds of support for science in order to pursue economic interests and needs.
Direct support exists in the form of governmental and industrial research laboratories; indirect
support is given through tax provisions and other subsidies to both the universities and industry.
One of the largest areas of governmental response to economic needs has been agricultural
research, which is largely biological research but also includes the physical and social sciences.
It should be noted that both "capitalist" and "socialist" societies and both "planning" and
"nonplanning" societies have supported science through their responsiveness to the economic
interests of special groups in the society and of society as a whole. The desirability of using
science to meet economic needs and increase economic resources is no longer anywhere in
question among the societies of the modern world.
Political structures and needs.
Political and economic factors have often tended to be closely combined in their effects on
science. Of course, the political factor has also had a great influence on science separately, for
example, because of the military needs that governments have had. After the recent history of the
part that governments have played in the development of atomic science for politico-military
needs, this point hardly needs further illustration. But this connection between politico-military
needs and science is far from new. Governments have always sought to increase military
firepower through the development of science. Research on the nature of metals, on the causes of
chemical reactions and explosions, and on the mathematics of the curves of ballistic missiles has
been spurred by military needs.
Religion.
Values and religion are closely connected in every society. A religion that supports modem
values, which in turn favor science, is, of course, a strong support for the development of
science. This specific connection is what Merton has sought to demonstrate in his analysis of the
relations between the complex of values and religious beliefs that constitute the Protestant ethic,
on the one hand, and the great development of seventeenth-century English science (1936;
1939). The values and beliefs of the Protestant ethic have now been secularized and diffused to
many social milieus other than the ones in which they originally arose. In their secular form they
are even more powerful supports for the development of science. The relations between a
religion and science are always, it should be carefully noted, complex and at partial cross
purposes. Thus, although the general beliefs and values of the liberal forms of Protestant
Christianity have been favorable to the development of science, even these liberal elements have
sometimes protested against specific scientific discoveries that have apparently contradicted
basic doctrines of their own. Thus, as Gillispie (1951) has shown, some liberal Protestants who
still held to the Biblical conceptions of miraculous floods and other catastrophes were opposed to
the notion of geological uniformitarianism when this new scientific idea was first developed in
the early nineteenth century. And, a little later, as Dupree (1959) and Lurie (1960) have
suggested, there was the same kind of resistance for a while to Darwin's discovery of
uniformities in the development of man and the other animal species. In analyzing the relations
between religion and science, the sociology of science treats them both as complex phenomena
and looks for specific connections between their specific components.
The educational system.
The maintenance and development of science is facilitated by an educational system that is
sufficiently specialized for, and sympathetic to, the growing science of its time. For example, as
we may learn from Ben-David (1960), new educational institutions developed for that purpose
played an essential role in the development of French science during the early nineteenth century
and in Germany a little later. All the modernizing countries of recent times, from Russia to the
small and weak African countries, have greatly strengthened their educational systems at all
levels because of their desire to improve their science. Before modern times, the universities
were not the home of scientific development, which they have since become. As late as "the
Great Instauration" of science in seventeenth-century England, the universities were still
indifferent or hostile to science, but a variety of other extremely favorable social conditions
helped science to nourish. This hostility continued for some time. Now, of course, a university
that is hostile or indifferent to science can exist only in a society, or in one of its parts, that is
content to remain a scientific backwater.
Social stratification system.
A system of social stratification that emphasizes the value of equality and that, in fact, realizes a
high degree of social mobility for the members of a society seems to -be more favorable for the
development of science than is the opposite, or closed, type of system. By providing a greater
degree of equality for talent, wherever in the society it originates, the open type of system can
provide greater resources of talent for manning scientific posts. Of course, if scientific roles are
not highly valued, rising talent will go elsewhere, but the two factors in combination— a high
value on science and the openness of the channels of social mobility—are very favorable to the
development of science- In the modern world, both of these conditions have been realized in
ever greater measure in the older industrial societies. And the newly modernizing societies, as
Dedijer (1961) has described them, are making great efforts to bring them into being almost
overnight.
Differentiation of the scientific role.
In relatively undifferentiated societies, past or contemporary, there are few roles for full-time
"intellectuals," as we may roughly characterize all those whose special function is to deal in
some kind of idea system. However, as societies become less simple and more structurally
differentiated, the role of intellectual enlarges and is occupied by at least a few individuals on a
full-time basis and with support from a variety of sources: a religious organization, the political
magnates, or inherited wealth. Certainly in Greece by the fifth century b.c., the role of
intellectual had emerged and was occupied with great distinction by men who have influenced
all subsequent thought—men like Plato and Aristotle. It should be noted, however, that the ideas
with which such intellectuals dealt were relatively much less differentiated than ideas are in the
modem world. On the whole, the intellectual still deals alike with religious, scientific, ethical,
political and philosophical ideas; indeed, the term "philosophy" covers all knowledge, all types
of ideas. But it is not until the beginnings of the modern world that this further process of
differentiation occurs, that is, differentiation between types of ideas, and makes way for the
specialized roles dealing wholly or primarily with scientific ideas- This differentiation of the
scientific role from other intellectual roles was slow in occurring, even in the modern world. In
seventeenth-century England, the new science was still called "the new philosophy." And the
oldest scientific society in the United States, founded in 1743 by Benjamin Franklin, among
others, was called the American Philosophical Society. So little differentiated was the
specialized role of scientist and so few were those who occupied this role, by whatever name and
with whatever means of support, that it was not until the nineteenth century that the very term
"scientist" was coined (by the Rev. William Whewell, in England in the 1840s).
The process of differentiation of the role of scientist went slowly until the middle of the
nineteenth century because of the difficulty of finding sources of support for it in the securely
established social organizations and arrangements. Beginning in the sixteenth century, newly
founded scientific societies provided various necessary facilities and supports for scientists, but
only a handful of full-time jobs. Governments did something more, but still there were very few
full-time positions in government museums or research organizations. Some distinguished
scientists, men like Franklin and Boyle, supported themselves on inherited or earned wealth.
Others worked at nonscientific jobs as well, or alternated between scientific and other activities;
such a scientist was Antoine Lavoisier. Very little was done by the universities and colleges of
the time; not until the nineteenth century, and in most places only in the latter half of that
century, did they open their doors wide to scientists.
Full institutionalization was achieved, then, when universities, various governmental
organizations, and many industrial firms recognized their great need for science, and established
regular and permanent roles and careers for scientists. In addition, a variety of special research
institutes, endowed by foundations, trade associations, and other special interest groups, or
sometimes operated by private individuals for profit, provided further and ever more specialized
jobs for scientists. The necessity and the legitimacy of the scientific role were increasingly
acknowledged.
One rough measure of the establishment of the scientific role in the modem world is the
quantitative increase in the numbers of those who occupy the role. As Derek Price ( 1963 ) has
shown, during the last 300 to 400 years there has been an exponential growth rate in the number
of scientists in the modern world. Starting from very small numbers, to be sure, the rate of
growth is such that there has been a doubling of the number of scientists in something like every
10 to 15 years. Because of the nature of exponential growth rates, the recent increase in the
number of scientists has been especially large. Price estimates that about 90 per cent of all the
scientists who have ever lived are still alive today. Given this growth rate, as well as other
reasons, it is small wonder that the place of science in the modern world is not yet as settled as
many would like.
There is, unfortunately, no room here to treat some other aspects of the social organization of
science. Such matters as patterns of authority, of collaboration, and of careers in scientific work
have recently been well studied by Glaser (1964), Hagstrom (1965), and Zuckerman (1965),
among others.
Motivations and rewards for scientists.
The mere existence of social roles is not enough for their full institutionalization. Adequate and
legitimate motivations in those who occupy the roles, and adequate and legitimate rewards from
those who support the roles, must also exist. On the whole, in the modern world, and especially
in the societies that modernized early, these motivations and rewards exist in sufficient measure.
What little evidence we have on the motives of working scientists indicates that, as in all other
social roles, a variety of motives in different combinations is at work. For example, because the
role of scientist now provides considerable stability, security, and prestige, many scientists are
motivated in some measure to achieve these goals. Also, because specialization in basic
scientific research provides considerable autonomy to the working scientist, many are motivated
to achieve the independence and self-control that the role makes possible. In future social-
psychological research on motivation for the scientific role, it will be desirable to keep in mind
both the multiplicity of motives that can engage the competent scientist and the way in which the
nature of his role structures certain typical combinations of motives. It would be interesting to
establish the precise role of much-vaunted "curiosity" in the motivation of scientists. And it
would also be desirable to use a typology of different scientific roles, а1оng the lines suggested
by Znaniecki (1940), such as theorist, experimenter, synthesizer, and similar functional types, to
see if various typical combinations of motives exist in these different scientific specialties.
As for rewards, the scientific role is now given satisfactory measures of such rewards as security,
prestige, and money income to attract its fair share of the talented members of modern societies.
As compared with those in business occupations, scientists tend to be rewarded with relatively
more prestige for professional standing and relatively less money income. Among scientists
themselves, and among the lay public to a lesser extent, there has developed a very elaborate set
of symbolic rewards for differential prestige bestowed for differential achievement in science.
The awarding of titles, prizes, medals, offices, and eponymous distinctions symbolizes the
existing hierarchy of differential prestige. A Nobel Prize in any of the four scientific fields in
which it is granted is only the best-known of the symbols of scientific achievement.
The reward of prestige in science is given primarily for originality in scientific discovery, but,
since it is sometimes difficult to appraise the degree of originality, sheer productivity may carry
off the honors. Like other men in other roles, scientists are deeply concerned about the just
distribution of rewards for their activities. Despite the norm of humility that prevails among them
and that does influence their behavior, they are motivated to achieve credit for being original,
just as businessmen are motivated to receive credit for making a profit. As a result of their
concern, as Merton (1957) has so well shown, scientists take pride in priority of discovery and
often engage in bitter quarrels over claims to priority. In sum, the role of the scientist is subject,
as are all social roles to a structured set of motivations and rewards, some of which are similar to
those in other roles and some of which arc different. The scientist is in no sense a "selfless"
creature above and beyond the influences of his social role.
During the last decade there has occurred the beginning of systematic research on what is called
"the image" of the scientist that the public at large and various segments of the whole society,
such as youth or the scientists themselves, actually hold. A favorable image of a social role is, of
course, an important reward for those who fill it. The evidence accumulated by this research
shows, on the whole, that the image of the scientist is a favorable one.
But as Mead and Metraux (1957-1958) and Beardslee and O'Dowd (1961); have shown in their
research, there arc some negative tones in the picture—a fear and dislike for some of the
characteristics and consequences of the scientific role. In -short, there is some ambivalence
toward scientists. In certain quarters, this admixture of negative feelings has been much
deplored, despite the fact that such feelings probably exist for every social role. Because all
social roles probably work at least some negative consequences for some people in some
situations, it is Utopian to expect a wholly positive image for scientists or for those who occupy
any other social-role category.
Communication among scientists.
Since one essential ingredient in the development of science is the combination of already
existing ideas, effective communication among scientists is an indispensable part of scientific
activities. One of the important social inventions in the early modem period in science was the
creation of local, national, and international societies and journals as means for the speedier and
more general communication of scientific work within the community of scientists. In order to
"keep up" in any branch of science, that is, to learn about the new ideas he can use to discover
still further new ideas, the working scientist now has to spend a valuable part of his time with the
professional journals, carefully studying a few and scanning many others. In addition to reading
the journals, scientists communicate at the meetings of professional associations, both formally
and informally. Here, too, as science has developed, there has been a proliferation of specialized
groups to match the specialized journals and the specialized activities they report. And, finally,
through informal visits, letters, telephone calls, and preprint mimeographed materials, scientists
strive to maintain the effective communication without which their activities would be slowed
down and even stopped.
In his description of the exponential growth rates for different aspects of science, Price (1963)
has also shown that there has been a doubling in the number of scientific journals every 10 to 15
years over the last three or four centuries. Because of this large increase, much of it necessary
because of the growth of new scientific specialties, there has been some concern among
scientists about the possibility of an excess of information; for some scientists, just "keeping up"
has become ever more difficult. In response to this felt difficulty, abstracting services have been
created and have multiplied, but still the problem of excessive and inefficient communication is
felt to persist. At the present, therefore, various groups of scientists are trying to codify and
computerize the processes of what is called "information retrieval" in science- So far they have
not had very great success, partly for reasons suggested below. [See INFORMATION
STORAGE and RETRIEVAL.]
The structure and functions of communications processes among scientists present an obvious
set of problems for the sociology of science—one on which much remains to be done. One
interesting suggestion from general sociological ideas and from the research that has been done
by Herbert Menzel (1959) is that scientists themselves sometimes think in terms of too rational a
conception of the communication process; that is, they may be expecting too much from the
journals and the formal meetings. In addition to these formal, manifest, and planned
communication processes in science, there are the informal, latent, and un-planned ones.
Scientists cannot always know precisely what they want and merely push a computer button to
get it. Often, through "milling around" at meetings, through chance visits, through indirect
channels, they get essential information which they can recognize as essential only when they get
it. As a journey into emergent novelty, science must use both planned and unplanned patterns of
communication. One of the newer and more interesting focuses of research in the sociology of
science is the question of the function of each pattern of communication for different scientific
needs and the distribution of these patterns among the different social situations in which
scientists find themselves. [See DIFFUSION, article on INTERPERSONAL INFLUENCE.]
The processes of scientific discovery.
In contrast with an individualistic, "heroic" conception of the processes of scientific discovery
that has prevailed in some quarters, though less now than formerly, the sociology of science has
sought to redress the balance of our understanding of these processes by demonstrating that they
have essential social components. Starting with the fact of the cumulative nature of science,
sociologists have pointed out that the established body of scientific ideas and methodologies at
any given time itself has the most important influence on setting problems for scientists to solve
and on providing leads for their solution. This determining effect of the established ideas and
methods is the source of the innumerable examples of the pattern of independent multiple
discovery in science. Given the prerequisites of a discovery in the established body of science, it
is almost inevitable, as Ogburn (1922) and Merton (1961) have argued and demonstrated from
the history of science, that independent multiples will occur. Some discoveries, of course, break
somewhat more sharply than others with the fundamental notions of the established science; they
have more emergent novelty. These are what Kuhn (1962) has called "scientific revolutions."
However, even these are far from ex nihilo. Although cumulative in important measure, they also
set new directions for the relevant fields and specialties in science.
Recent theory and research in the sociology of science have also qualified the older picture of the
processes of scientific discovery as based entirely on foresight, planning, rationality, and ready
acceptance. These characteristics certainly can be seen in large measure in mast discoveries. But,
in addition, in many discoveries there is an admixture of the unplanned, the nonrational or
irrational, and the obstructive, contributed by the discoverer himself or by others. These
characteristics manifest themselves in the pattern of serendipity in discovery and in the pattern of
resistance by scientists themselves to certain scientific discoveries. The serendipity pattern
occurs, and in actual research it occurs very often, when the researcher comes by happy chance
on something he was not looking for, that is, some anomaly that presents him with the
unexpected opportunity to change his preconceptions about his research and make a new
discovery (Barber 1952. pp. 203-205). The resistance pattern occurs when the scientist refuses to
accept his own or someone else's discovery because of theoretical or methodological
preconceptions, the force of superior authority or prestige, or the prejudices of particular schools
of thought (Barber & Hirsch 1962, chapter 32).
Of course, there has always been some resistance to scientific discoveries on the part of cultural
and social institutions outside science. Religion, political and economic interests—indeed, the
whole range of social factors that interact with science— have under some conditions opposed
one or another scientific idea or requirement, just as they have also supported others. An
important task for the sociology of science is to analyze specific sources of acceptance and
resistance for specific types of scientific ideas and needs.
Science as a social problem
Like the relations among any of the parts of society, the relations between science and various
other parts of society are often inharmonious, as the participants in these relations see them, or
dysfunctional, as the objective observer sees them. Thus, sociology can also study science as
what it calls, in general, "a social problem." There are two aspects of science as a social problem.
In one aspect, science is an activity whose participants feel, in some important measure, angry or
hostile to society because their values and needs are not being properly met or respected. For
example, scientists resent what they define as unnecessary controls on their work; they complain
about insufficient financial support for their preferred types of research; they deplore politically
imposed secrecy; and they try to throw off all nationalistic and other parochial limitations on
their research and communication activities. However much these frustrations may be necessary
in the light of other social needs than those of science, to scientists they are social problems
calling for protest and reform. A variety of organized and unorganized means of protest now
exist among scientists to cope with these problems.
In another aspect, science is a social problem to various social groups who consider some of its
consequences harmful to themselves and who therefore want to restrict or even eliminate
science. Over both the short run and the long, many of the consequences of science are in fact
harmful to various social groups. However unintended in most instances, these harmful
consequences raise the issue of the social responsibilities of scientists, who are in part their
source. It has come to be seen that responsibility for the harmful social consequences of science
belongs not directly with scientists but with the several established social and political processes
for handling social problems. It has also come to be seen that scientists can play a variety of
useful roles in these social and political processes. If scientists have no absolute responsibility
for the troubles they help to bring, neither are they absolved from all concern. A number of
social and political arrangements arc now being worked out to permit scientists to act as expert
advisers on the technical aspects of the social problems they have helped to bring into being or
that they can foresee arising out of their activities.
[See also diffusion; innovation; knowledge, sociology of; medical care, article on ethnomedicine;
technology; and the biographies of Ogburn; Weber, Max; Znaniecki.]
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