Volume 16, Number 8 · May 6, 1971
Science and the Glory of God
By P.M. Rattansi
Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England
by Robert K. Merton
Howard Fertig, 320 pp., $11.00
When first published in 1938, Robert K. Merton's study was respectfully received by sociologists and historians of science but failed to arouse greater interest in the questions with which he tried to grapple. Though far more carefully formulated and documented by an ingenious use of statistical techniques then being applied to American mass communications, it seemed to sociologists like the tail end of the German Wissenschaftssoziologie then entering a period of decline. The history of science was being transformed from a dull catalogue of scientific discoveries into an exciting field of intellectual history by philosopher-historians like E. A. Burtt, Ernst Cassirer, and Alexander Koyré, and the exploration of the conceptual structures of past science pushed the study of the social setting to the periphery of historiographic interest.
Review, 2349 words
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