Weber, Merton and the Sociology of Science
Max Weber may be taken as the starting point for an alternative tradition of social thinking about science. Weber linked the growth of science with the increasingly pervasive ‘rationalization' and ‘disenchantment' of life under modern capitalist civilization (see Chapter 5).
The norms of science demanded intellectual integrity, and a value-free commitment to empirical truth. Paradoxically, however, this meant that the attitude of the scientist to ‘his' (Weber doesn't discuss science as a possible vocation for women!) vocation was one which could be understood only as a species of value- oriented rationality (Weber 1949; see also Chapter 5). Science was to be viewed as a distinct value sphere, independent of the various instrumental purposes to which its findings might be put. Weber adds to this account of the normative character of science some brief but suggestive remarks about its institutional character. The dependence of scientific professions on public funding allows Weber to describe scientific practice as a form of ‘state capitalism', the general trend in which will be (as with industrial capitalism) a growing separation of scientific workers from ownership and control of their means of production. The craft character of much research, especially in the humanities and social sciences, would eventually be displaced in favour of large institutional research bureaucracies and an associated proletarianization of research.However, at the level of the normative ethos of science, Weber merely reflected the view that scientists themselves have tended to project: disinterested pursuit of the truth through obedience to rational rules for collecting and analysing evidence and so on. As in the Marxist approaches to the sociology of knowledge, and the empiricist philosophy of science, science was held to be objective to the extent that it held external social interests and influences at bay.
Only distorted beliefs and falsehoods stood in need of explanation in terms of social (or psychological) factors.The autonomy of science from external pressures was also emphasized in the most influential sociological approach to science prior to the 1960s. This was the functionalist approach, developed by R. K. Merton. Merton authored a classic study (Merton 1938, 1970) of the seventeenth-century establishment and legitimization of modern physical science which closely paralleled Weber's study of the relationship between the Protestant sects and modern capitalism (see Chapter 5). His interest in the distinctive normative character of science persisted in his general sociology of modern science. For Merton, science is characterized by adherence to a set of technical and moral norms which are peculiar to it, and which insulate its key processes from external distorting or constraining influences. The technical norms are those of logical inference and adequate, reliable and valid empirical evidence.
So far, Merton simply accepts without question the empiricist account of scientific knowledge, and the accounts scientists tend to give of their own practice. However, ensuring conformity to these technical norms, and achieving the goal of everexpanding ‘certified knowledge', requires institutionally sanctioned (and preferably psychologically internalized) moral norms, or ‘institutional imperatives'. Merton identifies four of these. First, universalism - ‘The acceptance or rejection of claims entering the lists of science is not to depend on the personal or social attributes of their protagonists; his race, nationality, religion, class and personal qualities are as such irrelevant' (Merton 1968: p. 55). The second institutional imperative is communism: scientific knowledge doesn't belong to its inventor or discoverer, in the sense that it can be bought and sold. The only benefit a scientist may legitimately claim is recognition and esteem from his peers.
This is why there is a strong emphasis on publication, and also explains the importance of priority disputes. The third norm is that of disinterestedness, and the fourth organized scepticism. Both norms require suspension of judgement, and obedience to the dictates of evidence and logic. As Merton points out, this is liable to give rise to conflict with non-scientific institutions (such as religious ones) which treat as sacred sets of beliefs which science subjects to empirical and rational evaluation.Merton's sociology of science was subsequently criticized for its failure to empirically investigate the practice of scientists, as distinct from taking on trust their accounts of it. Later sociology of science, as we will see, claimed that in practice the lofty norms described by Merton have little purchase on the way science is actually conducted. However, Merton's account can be understood as an ‘ideal type' in the Weberian sense (see Chapter 5), not describing the actual practice of science but rather providing a conceptual model with which to study the extent of empirical deviation. Taken in this spirit, Merton's model of the normative structure of science can provide a basis for a critical understanding of the extent to which today's institutionalization of science around commercial and military objectives contradicts the professed values of science. However, Merton's sociology of science is self-limiting in ways which later developments were to override. He, like most of his Marxist and Weberian predecessors, thought that the sociology of (successful) science must be confined to the study of how a particular institutionalized practice for the pursuit of knowledge could arise and be sustained. So far as the natural sciences were concerned, there could be no question of a sociological explanation of their content: this was determined entirely by evidence and logic.