ABRAHAM, Merton Thesis

Misunderstanding the Merton Thesis: A Boundary Dispute between History and SociologyAuthor(s): Gary A. AbrahamSource: Isis, Vol. 74, No. 3 (Sep., 1983), pp. 368-387Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/232596 .

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Misunderstanding the

Merton Thesis

A Boundary Dispute between History and Sociology

By Gary A. Abraham*

N THE CONTINUING DEBATE over the relation of science and religion in seventeenth-century England, the diverse parties among the historians have

all failed to appreciate the strongest and most central line of the argument Robert Merton set forth in an influential trio of chapters in Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England, originally published in 1938. That failure is due to their disciplinary bias, which has blinded them to Merton's basi- cally sociological perspective on the historical influence of cultural ideas. In this article I consider a limited body of the polemical literature, but in the context of my main focus, which is on recovering the neglected outlines of Merton's original thesis and showing how far both friendly and hostile historians have recast it. The conclusion points to some promising directions taken in recent work by historians on questions relevant to the Merton thesis.

THE MERTON THESIS

Since Merton first published his work in Osiris, the thesis he put forward about the relation between Protestantism and science has come under repeated attack. In 1965 Theodore Rabb charged that the "unanswered criticisms" leveled at Merton's thesis were conclusive refutations. Since that time no one who would sort and weigh the issues raised by historians siding with or against Rabb can fail to consult Merton's more recent replies to his critics. Those who do will be struck not only by Merton's unwillingness to enter the fray, but also by his genuine surprise at the nature of the reception he has had at the hands of historians, whether hostile or friendly.1 This situation begs to be compared to the

* Department of Sociology, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15243. I would like to thank Professor Bernard Goldstein for criticisms and comments on an earlier draft

and for encouragement to prepare the paper for publication. ' T. K. Rabb, "Religion and the Rise of Modern Science," Past and Present, 1965, 31:111-126,

at p. 113; for Merton's replies see esp. the new preface in Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England (New York: Howard Fertig/Harper Torchbooks, 1970); and Merton, "Introduction" and "Bibliographical Post Script," in "Studies in the Sociology of Science," Social Theory and Social Structure, 2nd enlarged ed. (New York: Free Press, 1968), pp. 585-590, 649-660. Although Merton has stated that the Protestantism-and-science hypothesis should be confined to the "trio" of Chs. 4-7 in Science, Technology (this statement is important evidence

ISIS, 1983, 74: 368-387 368



MISUNDERSTANDING THE MERTON THESIS

unexpected furor Max Weber set in motion with his more intentionally provocative thesis on the connection between seventeenth-century Protestantism and modern capitalism, which some (including Merton) would see as a precursor to the thesis on religion and science. Although his original audience was theolo- gians and interested laymen, Weber's thesis was immediately met with a flurry of detailed specialist critiques from economic historians. They seemed not to understand that Weber was launching a new approach in his work, addressing the cultural factors that can, "like switchmen," direct the interests and energies of whole societies down certain tracks, rather than speaking to local historical problems.2

Merton's book has suffered a similar fate. It has inspired a debate whose terms were set by not Merton himself, but by friendly historians, with a view to ex- tending his thesis. Further, failure to comprehend the "sociological approach" Merton first proposed in 1938 has led both friendly and critical respondents into areas quite foreign to the original thrust of the monograph. Both sides of the dispute have so far, I think, failed to give a hearing to the Merton thesis.

Most simply expressed, Merton's original argument is that the spread of Puri- tan values encouraged the growth of science as an activity. The argument (which is not without flaw) proceeds along two unequally weighted lines. The first holds that science gained "new-won prestige" because of social utilitarian and personal asceticist rationales first introduced, in the form they came to take in the late seventeenth century, by the Protestant ethic (in Max Weber's sense). A subsidiary argument holds that the ideal of "intramundane ascetic" discipline was the prime motive for some scientists to do science. According to Merton, utilitarian behavior first began to be valued on a wide scale when Calvinism emerged, but in England utilitarian values escaped the confines of Calvinist orthodoxy and led to "a substantially identical nucleus of religious and ethical convictions" among "Anglicans, Calvinists, Presbyterians, Independents, Quak- ers, and Millenarians."3 "Puritanism" means for Merton simply the religious injunction to remake this world, but specifically so as to be useful to society.

that Merton continues to conceive the "hypothesis" as a self-sufficient argument, see esp. pp. xii- xiii), I have considered the whole monograph, with the exception of the "quartet" (Chs. 7-10, Mer- ton's phraseology), to constitute the Merton thesis. For the commentators are unanimous in including the statistics in the first chapters as important to the thesis. Chs. 1-3 are crucial for understanding the problem Merton addressed and thus the very scope of the argument, and important qualifying material is contained in the concluding chapter.

2 On the audience for Die protestantische Ethik (1904-1905), see Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Talcott Parsons (New York: Scribners, 1930, 1958), Ch. 1, esp. pp. 40ff. This was reprinted as the first essay in Max Weber, Gesammelte Aufsdtze zur Religions- soziologie (Tibingen: Mohr, 1920-1921); Vol. I also contains the general introduction to the re- maining studies (titled Die Wirtschaftsethik der Weltreligionen), in which Weber used the metaphor of "switchmen." This essay is trans. as "Social Psychology of the World Religions" in Hans H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills, From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1946), pp. 267-301; see p. 280. For the debate on Weber's thesis, see Johannes Winckelmann, ed., Max Weber: Die protestantische Ethik II: Kritiken und Antikritiken (Munich: Otto Zeller, 1968). The parallel between the fates of Weber's and Merton's theses was noted in passing by Benjamin N. Nelson in a review of Merton, Science, Technology, in American Journal of Sociology, 1972, 78:223- 231, at p. 229; rpt. in R. K. Merton et al., Varieties of Political Expression in Sociology (Chicago: Univ. Chicago Press, 1972), 223-231.

3 Merton, Science, Technology, quoting p. 57; for statements of the thesis, see also pp. 55-56, 59-60, 75, 78, 83, 84, 91-92, as well as pp. ix-x, xiii-xiv, xix from the 1970 preface. For the argument on personal motives, see pp. 81, 86, 94.

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Puritanism does not cover religious "enthusiasm," which rejects the rule of sober discipline for the religious life and so is outside the Puritan camp.4 The social-utilitarian precept that emerged in Puritanism could have different dogmatic motives, from the ethical rationalism shared by both sides of the dispute over the reformation of the Anglican Church, to the ethical irrationalism associated with a strict doctrine of predestination, which held that good works were efficacious only for the personal assurance of one's election, which alone justified one's actions morally.

If later Presbyterianism differed from Calvinist Precisionism by declaring that man is justified by good works as well as by faith, it none the less led to a sanction of persistent, hard labor as a means of salvation, while the latter exacted the same sort of behavior as establishing a conviction of a state of grace. Thus we find abundant confirmation of Max Weber's dictum that "similar ethical maxims may be correlated with very different dogmatic foundations."5

How was this conservative ethic of discipline effective? Merton answers that by virtue of the tenet that the good of the national community ("society") was an object of God's will, working for society also became a way to prove oneself religiously in a personal sense and a test for evaluating the moral character of others, including the early scientists. This manner of reckoning became generalized to English society as a whole; so that from its originally religious roots, Puritan social utilitarianism came to be "imbued with a power of its own." This transition to a value orientation acceptable to the wider English public had less to do with religion than with other, independently developing trends, including science itself: "The values implicit in these doctrines which struck the deepest roots in English life were those congenial to tendencies developing independently in other compartments of culture, and, in this way, Puritanism was in- tegrated with many cultural trends which were in their incipiency."6 But given the received cultural constitution of English society, the formulation of such a value orientation (especially in public debates) had to originate in religious sentiments. Those who rejected religious rationales altogether, for example, could not count on receiving a public hearing.7

A brief review of the main sources Merton employs in this argument-nearly all contemporary accounts-shows that he stresses the role of religion as a source of propaganda for science. He shows quite convincingly how Sprat pressed Bacon's philosophy into the service of Protestant ascetic values, em- phasizing more generally that a "point to point correlation between the princi- ples of Puritanism, and the avowed attributes, goals and results of scientific investigation ... was the contention of the protagonists of science at that time." He gives great weight to Boyle's "apologia of science," Some Considerations Touching the Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy, composed in the 1650s but not released until 1663; tells us that Ray's ascetic values led him to

4 Ibid., p. 67. 5 Ibid., quoting pp. 57 (Merton's emphasis), 61; cf. pp. 64, n. 26 (the quotation from Sprat's

Sermons), 73, 79, 87. 6 Ibid., quoting pp. 61 (cf. 63, n. 22; 64, n. 27; 65, n. 30); 59 (cf. pp. 78, 82, 102ff). 7 Merton's argument differs from Max Weber's here in important respects. See the discussion at

the end of this section.

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propagandize on behalf of science; shows that Wilkins's propaganda was designed to show that science was "a veneration for God" (as was Baxter's dis- cussed below); and concludes that "religion sanctioned science and raised the social estimation of those who pursued scientific investigation."8

Nevertheless Merton's own formulations are not free from ambiguity: he does not keep the two lines of his argument separate. Thus: "Puritanism transfused ascetic vigor into activities which, in their own right [i.e., under the prevailing conditions if Puritan influences were absent?] could not as yet achieve self-suf- ficiency." It is not clear from such a statement whether Merton intends to refer to mass perceptions of science or to the personal attitude required (by his thesis) of scientists themselves. Certainly the preponderance of authorities he cites are publicists for science, not unimpeachable practitioners. The ambiguity is especially apparent in Merton's use of Baxter, for example, whom he cites to the effect that scientific discoveries "enable their originators to arrive at an abundant conviction of their state of grace."9 Now only the extraordinarily pious scientist (e.g., Boyle, and perhaps Newton) would hold such a belief, even if dilettantes like Wilkins are left out of consideration.10 But even then the scientist in question would have to be convinced of the truth of the doctrine of predestination. In Merton's book no example of such a scientist is ever given; what is given instead is Baxter's advice that successful scientific activity can enhance one's subjective certitude of salvation. Merton often quotes statements by Wil- kins and Ray to the effect that science affords a means of confirming the majesty of the deity, of seeing for oneself the hand of God in nature, and so forth. No scientist, however, is presented as ever having said that this was what motivated him, either to take up science or to make a particular discovery.

These arguments cannot be adduced as proof for the mass reception of particular values favorable to "science, as a value." In fact, there is an ambiguity in Merton's argument at this point that has led to repeated misconstruals of its central claims. This has to do with the problematic overlap between Merton's and Max Weber's theses concerning both the period they analyze and the nature of the individual's "religious" motivation. Weber treats the first and Merton the second half of the seventeenth century. More important, Weber focused on the "Protestant ascetic" as impelled by an interest in his own status for salvation, while Merton argued for the significance of more diffuse, "cultural" motivations. The difference is reflected in Weber's use of the Puritan cases of conscience to show how a specifically pastoral ideology affected certain classes of men. Merton never employed these sources. He does occasionally use an argument based on personal interest in salvation, but it is his weakest.11 Weber's thesis concerns the Protestant ethic up to, but not beyond the time when secular arguments for social utilitarianism emerged and the "spirit of capitalism" took on a historical life of its own. This is where the Merton thesis picks up. Weber also denied that individual religious commitment (which is not to say mass

8 Merton, Science, Technology, quoting pp. 89, 84, 85, 72; cf. pp. 91 and 71, n. 52 (on Baxter); and see Merton's index for additional references to Sprat, Boyle, Ray, Wilkins, and Baxter.

9 Ibid., quoting pp. 86, 76. 10 On Boyle see Merton, Social Theory, pp. 650-651, 658-659. 1 See, e.g., Merton, Science, Technology, pp. 59, bottom, and 82, top. Weber's sources appear

in The Protestant Ethic, p. 60, and also esp. Ch. 5, pp. 80ff.

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cultural assent) to Protestant asceticism had anything to do with the origins of science, in a passage from his lectures on economic history with which Merton has great difficulty.'2 Merton's thesis, however, should be thought of as a distinct proposal which must stand on its own merits.

If "intramundane asceticism" is construed, however, as an emerging public norm for manners and morals, rather than as a strictly psychological impulse, a connection can be made between certain Puritan values and the changing social meaning of science; and Merton gives us ample resources for this line of argument. The publicist arguments from design, arguments for scientific activity as a field for the legitimate glorification of God, and arguments for the quality of performance in a vocation (which is especially evident, it was argued, in science) as a sign of salvation-all these are nonetheless important. Only they cannot be cast as motives for doing science. They doubtless acted on the popular religious mind as motives for accepting those who did do science. For it could have provided a convincing argument to laymen, noble and middling alike, that scientists could reveal God's order in the world. This important revision of the significance of some of Merton's secondary arguments allows us to retain the bulk of the Merton thesis, now conceived as dealing with two main issues:

* Puritan sources for the faith in science, when intentionally directed toward a given end, to produce beneficial results-the utilitarian rationale for science as a force for social progress.

* Puritan sources for the new belief that science could be as worthy a personal vocation (or avocation, for nobility) as any other-this (Merton argues) affected both (some) scientists themselves and their publics.

Both the widespread faith in science's power and acceptance of science as a vocation served to legitimate science in England in the long run.13 Both rationales were used by the otherwise diverse parties in the publicistic movement for science in late seventeenth-century England. The crucial turning point at the local historical level, as Merton tells the story, came when both aspiring and established elites turned to science as an avocation and object of curiosity, after the Restoration.14

THE HISTORIANS' RESPONSE

Most historians seem never to have understood Merton's original intentions. The largest part of the problem is their insensitivity to the particular sociological perspective he adopted on the history of ideas, an insensitivity which leads them to expect a more obvious, tractable causal relationship between religion and science than Merton advances. But Merton was tireless in his attempts to make explicit an argument which, it could be argued (although I will not do so here),

12 See Merton, Science, Technology, pp. 100-101, n. 52, and at greater length Weber's 1910 essay, trans. as "Anti-Critical Last Word on 'The Spirit of Capitalism,' " American Journal of Sociology, 1978, 85:1105-1131, on p. 1129. For readings of Merton's thesis as an extension of Max Weber's theses, see esp. Leo F. Solt, "Puritanism, Capitalism, Democracy, and the New Science," Amer- ican Historical Review, 1967, 73:18-29; and A. Rupert Hall, "Merton Revisited, or Science and Society in the Seventeenth Century," History of Science, 1963, 2:1-16, esp. pp. 3-4.

13 Merton, Science, Technology, p. xvi, bottom; on the perception that science was a worthy vocation, see pp. xx, xxiii.

14 Ibid., pp. xxix, 95; Merton, Social Theory, pp. 649-656.

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historians often rely on tacitly: that is, that Puritanism gave rise to a system of values that favored a positive reception of science but that, by the late seventeenth century, had little to do with religious partisanship. In Merton's thesis Puritanism should not be understood as a particular theological doctrine whose effect on science can be gauged by the number of scientists who were also Pu- ritans, or by a change in the internal content of science.

Crucial for understanding this argument is the sense and significance of "religion" in Merton's thesis. For he cites the discussions of Emile Durkheim and the anthropologists A. R. Radcliffe-Brown and Bronislaw Malinowski, invoking what has become a technical definition of religion in contemporary social science. This use of "religion" is identical with what Merton also refers to as "dominant cultural values and sentiments." Such diffuse "values" become a "social force" apart from the power of accredited authorities whose role it is to adumbrate these values doctrinally, whether or not they constitute a "church." More specifically, the force of these general values is evident in the tacit necessity within any cultural community to justify new "patterns of conducts," such as organized scientific activity, in their terms; justification of this sort maintains more or less explicit continuity with the past. Sociologists conceive of this necessity as effecting a sort of negative selection on forms of behavior that occur as isolated cases more or less universally, but would not become widespread within any one community without the specific value rationales in question. These value rationales can apply to the particular form of behavior (here the pursuit of science) but must have a wider reference that makes the behavior consistent with most other accepted roles in the community. Merton refers to the widening acceptance over time of science as a new form of conduct as initiating a process of "institutionalization" of science. This part of his thesis addresses a change occurring in English society as a whole. At the same time general acceptance of these values gives positive direction to many individuals' general interests and character: "It is the dominating system of ideas," Merton argues, "which determines the choice between alternative modes of action which are equally compatible with the underlying sentiments" shared by some persons.15

This notion of the role of values is similar to the concept of "climate of opinion" used by historians. But historians tend to understand "religion" more nar- rowly, as a body of explicit espousals of intentions in doctrinal form. Thus Theo- dore Rabb has attacked Merton's thesis by claiming that "he was not drawing distinctions between Protestantism and Catholicism, but between Anglicanism and Puritanism." James Carroll is also tied to the narrowest view of religion as doctrinal orthodoxy when, in a particularly acrimonious review of the work, he holds Merton's use of Puritan values against him on principle, as if there were no conditions under which we could assign values a crucial motivating role in conduct. Both views equate religion with formal doctrine and so fail to address Merton's argument.16

15 Merton, Science, Technology, p. 91. 16 See Carl Becker, "Climates of Opinion," in The Heavenly City of the Eighteenth Century Phi-

losophers (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1932), pp. 1-31; Rabb, "Religion," p. 114, and James W. Carroll, "Merton's Thesis on English Science," American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 1954, 13:427-432, on p. 428, n. 8.

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Merton also at first seems to use "religion" in this narrower sense, but a closer look reveals that he is interested in the historical effects particular religions have on the wider sphere of cultural values. Religions in the narrower sense (and this is the way I will use the term from now on, distinguishing it from "culture") do not necessarily determine cultural values. The examples of plural cults in primitive and ancient cultures and religions in twentieth-century Western cultures should make this clear. But in the seventeenth century religion was "clearly a preeminent social [-cultural] value."17 In Merton's view it has to be shown in what ways a particular religion altered the cultural values of the particular national community, England. As we have seen, his thesis poses two ways this change occurred: by introducing utilitarian rationales for "patterns of conducts," and by introducing norms of personal discipline within the valued vocations.

Merton also differs from the historians in the significance he assigns religious doctrines. He does not think that they are straightforward expressions of conscious intentions, which would make doctrines akin to legal rules. Rather, they are necessarily imcomplete attempts by some to render the "patterns of conducts" into words; they may in addition have consequences of their own, but these would be hard to predict on the basis of the formal structure of the doctrines alone, especially in the absence of a forensic context, as in Puritanism. But because the nature of the change Merton looks at is cultural rather than simply doctrinal, he makes no reference to necessary intentions in setting out the thesis itself. Indeed, Merton stresses the fact that often the historian cannot distinguish meaningfully among the "motive, sanction, and authority" an individual derives from religious or other value rationales; for general values become objective facts to which the individual willy-nilly must orient himself, frequently without full awareness of those wider forces that direct his fate. The historical observer has a better vantage point from which to judge the "motive forces" of historical action.18

These last points are especially crucial for Merton's characterization of the institutionalization of science. That this notion is not used consistently in either history or sociology accounts for some important miscues on the status of the Merton thesis. The concept of institution commonly has two major senses: persistent forms of conduct that embody cultural values (the sociological use), and formal organizations (the commonsense use). The term "institutionalization" is used in the same two ways. Joseph Ben-David has spelled out the broader meaning of institutionalization as follows:

Here institutionalization will mean (1) the acceptance in a society of a certain activity as an important social function valued for its own sake; (2) the existence of norms that regulate conduct in the given field of activity in a manner consistent with the realization of its aims and autonomy from other activities; and finally, (3) some adap- tation of social norms in other fields of activity to the norms of the given activity.

Ben-David cites as consistent with this the current definition in the International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, by S. M. Eisenstadt:

17 Merton, Science, Technology, p. 75. 18 Ibid., pp. 82, 84, 106-107 (esp. n. 63); cf. p. 80.

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Three basic aspects of institutions are emphasized. First the patterns of behavior which are regulated by institutions ("institutionalized") deal with some perennial, basic problems of any society. Second, institutions involve the regulation of behavior of individuals in society according to some definite, continuous, and organized patterns. Finally, these patterns involve a definite normative ordering and regulation; that is, regulation is upheld by norms and sanctions which are legitimized by these norms. 19

Although somewhat atomistic in their enumeration of the characteristics of social institutions, these citations are one with Merton in pointing to the realm of value in human life as an at least analytically autonomous dimension.20 Gener- ally, for any particular sort of human conduct to be carried on in a sustained manner over time, it must find a place in the accepted or acceptable hierarchy of values recognized in the proximate social group ("society"). Indeed, while such forms of conduct may very well occur sporadically, so long as they do not take on value in general terms, they will fail to have any consistent meaning. And "culture" (at least in this view) is the realm of "value" and determines the parameters of "meaning" in human life. Now sociologists themselves often use the term "institution" and its cognates in a sharply contrasting, even materialistic sense, which builds on the more commonsense usage, where institutions are simply organizations. Max Weber, for example, uses the term to refer exclusively to formal organizations (Anstalt), whether they be compulsory or voluntary, rather than to values. Using the term in this way may, but need not, imply a materialistic theory of values or cultural norms as well. Thus Weber elsewhere explicitly outlines a sociological view of moral and legal norms that is consistent with Merton's stated views on the autonomous significance of value rationales that derive their validity from the wider cultural configuration of society.21

Thus the object of Merton's analysis is a change in cultural values. But what bearing does this have on his view of scientific change? Merton felt from the first that the various forms in which he couched his argument would make plain that he was talking about the increasing public and publicistic interest in science, and therefore about the rise of "science as embodied in a well defined social movement," which he conceives in turn as the emergence of "science, as a social value," after the manner of R. F. Jones's treatment of the general English debate over the old and new learning in Ancients and Moderns. He repeatedly

19 Joseph Ben-David, The Scientist's Role in Society: A Comparative Study (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1971), p. 75; Shmuel N. Eisenstadt, "Social Institutions: The Concept," Inter- national Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan/Free Press, 1968), Vol. XIV, pp. 409-421, on p. 409a. Of the 8 definitions given for "institution" in The Oxford English Dictio- nary, one, def. 6, is the broader, properly sociological usage; the commonsense, more materialistic usage predominates in the legal, religious, and other usages cited (1, 2, 3, 7, 8). Both meanings, however, have been used since the 16th century. Compare Webster's Third New International Dic- tionary, defs. 3a, 3b.

20 See Louis Dumont, "On Value," Proceedings of the British Academy, 1980, 66:207-241, which also deals with trait atomism.

21 See Max Weber, Economy and Society: An Outline of Interpretative Sociology, 3 vols. (New York: Bedminster Press, 1968), Vol. I, pp. 52-53, and Vol. III, p. 1380, on institutions (cf. the trans. in W. G. Runciman, ed., Weber: Selections in Translation (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1978, pp. 37-38); and Vol. I, pp. 326-328, on value rationales in the special context of the relation between legal rules and a de facto economic order.

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stressed the independent and antecedent advance of science as a body of knowledge in its own right.22 Only in 1970, upon reviewing the complex reception of his work did Merton concede that he should have done more to bring these points together in an "emphatic" single statement making it clear that he was not arguing that Puritanism as such advanced scientific knowledge as such. Yet historians of science have subsequently disregarded the one emphatic statement of the main methodological problematic Merton did give in his brief introduction, where he tries to establish the legitimacy of the sociological viewpoint against two major strains of methodological individualism: the Great Man theory of history (particularly congenial to the historian of science) and biological reduc- tionism.23

Yet advance in the results of scientific activity is not and does not necessarily lead to the institutionalization of science: explanation of the former still leaves the latter to be accounted for. Widespread interest in science, across social classes, regardless of its quality, is one index of institutionalization. Merton's method of establishing that this interest spread during the period 1665-1702 in England relies on evidence of elite interest. His preliminary tabulations depict "Shifts in Initial Interest [in Science] Among English Elites," and accordingly he used the Dictionary of National Biography because it identified a population "of sufficient importance." "Science became fashionable" in the seventeenth century, he tells us, "which is to say: it became highly approved." Approved by whom? We immediately hear the names of such upper-class luminaries as Charles II, Prince Rupert, Sir Matthew Hale, and Lord Keeper Guilford, on the attraction of the new scientific pursuits for "gentlemen of culture.'24 Merton also notes the interest of "litterateurs," the patronage of "distinguished per- sonages," and the new chairs in the modern sciences in the universities. He presents the growing interest as part of the problem to be explained: "This increased [elite] attention to science-which is reflected in the data concerning shifts of vocational interests-was a necessary condition, if not sufficient cause, of the accelerated rate of advance [of science] in the latter part of the century." 25

One of the usual strategies taken to justify dismissing the Merton thesis is to show that such shifts in interest were not especially significant for the development of theory and methods in the new sciences. But Merton had already stressed that these shifts have no necessary connection to the scientific contri- butions of individuals, and indeed as the significance of the individual contribution as such increases, it becomes an independent force in stimulating general interest in a special field. Moreover, independent interest in special scientific

22 See Merton, Science, Technology, pp. 27, 47 (= Table 6), 93-94, 208-209. Merton cites R. F. Jones, Ancients and Moderns: A Study of the Background of the Battle of the Books (St. Louis, Mo.: Washington Univ. Studies, 1936), on pp. 85, 88, 93-94, and esp. 114-119.

23 Merton, Science, Technology, pp. xxix (1970), 3-7 (esp. 5-6). 24 Ibid., pp. 9, 27; see Tables 1 and 2 (pp. 32-37), and cf. p. 43. Merton's argument about the

new feeling that legitimate activity ought to be oriented toward the good of society has received confirmation from Margaret Judson's presentation of Hale as a case of the new orientation to the community of England, as distinct from "the king, or law, or even God," which emerges first with the Cromwellian period; see The Restoration of the Stuarts, Blessing or Disaster? A Report of a Folger Library Conference ... (Washington, D.C.: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1960), p. 90. For Charles and Rupert see now Michael Hunter, Science and Society in Restoration England (Cam- bridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 130-131.

25 Merton, Science, Technology, p. 28.

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fields originates "outside the cultural system which is our primary concern."26 The central trio of chapters advancing the thesis proper opens with the statement that science conceived as a series of "occasional discoveries" can be identified long before the seventeenth century and continues to our own day; but Merton argues that it first becomes an "accredited and organized" enterprise in seventeenth-century England, especially with the establishment of the Royal Society.27

All this should have made critics reluctant to read into Merton's book "ex- ternalist explanations" of the "internal" "intellectual development of science." A. Rupert Hall set the tone for this popular route of attack, by intentionally narrowing his definition of science to a series of theoretical results, which of course in part it is. But to conceive of it in this way is to divorce it not only from all social conditions, but from psychological, biological, biographical conditions as well-in fact, from the persons of scientists altogether. Hall tends to address the relation between a statement and its objective referents-the question of validity-at the expense of the historical and sociological question of the relation between actors and their environments. The former is not, by itself, a historical problem, so that built into Hall's way of looking at seventeenth-century science in England is an inability to explain its origins. Instead of confront- ing the complex and subtle causal relations this last problem involves, he invites us to make invidious choices: "If Puritanism was not the 'ultimate cause' of (say) the Principia, was it a cause? Was the religious encouragement of science the decisive factor or not? If it was not, then the fact that men are Catholic or Protestant is about as significant as whether they wear breeches or trousers." Thus Hall recasts Merton's problem as one of accounting for the content and validity of particular scientific work. Hall's own inability to account for the growth of scientific activity in the seventeenth century is only too apparent, as in his curiously oblique assertion that "the intellectual change is one whose explanation must be sought in the history of the intellect . . . ," or when he reveals the principle by which he would nevertheless explain the "scientific revolution" so disembodied: "the scientist's sense of freedom," by which he means a freedom to follow consciously chosen interests in a scientific problem, heretofore suppressed by religious oppression.28 But Merton was more careful than Hall makes out. He in fact disavows any intention of accounting for the "internal history of science," a disavowal aimed to show the irrelevance of the distinction between internal and external for his problem.29

Unfortunately, too many historians neglect to ask the critical question: what kinds of historical evidence are required to disprove the Merton thesis? Once they have assumed the social and historical independence of science, they ignore this neglect, which they justify, if at all, along the purely conceptual lines laid down by Hall.30 Those historians attacking the theses on the relation between

26 Ibid., quoting p. 45; see pp. 48-50: "minor, short-time fluctuations in scientific interest are primarily determined by the internal history of the science in question."

27 Ibid., quoting p. 55: cf. the discussion on p. 225. 28 A. R. Hall, "Merton Revisited," pp. 6, 11, 9-10. 29 See, e.g., Merton, Science, Technology, p. 75: "There was throughout a reciprocal interac-

tion." 30 Similar arguments appear in A. R. Hall and Marie Boas Hall, "The Intellectual Origins of the

Royal Society London and Oxford," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London, 1968, 23(2):157-168, on p. 166.

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science and Puritanism which Christopher Hill advanced in 1964 and 1965 in Past and Present behave in just this way. Ironically (or perhaps more to the point) Hill himself, although a social historian of ideas, displays the same ten- dency. He falls into the double error (following S. F. Mason) of making the "internalistic" character of the results of scientific activity the object of historical explanation, but then calling attention to the details of religious dogma and trying to show a causal connection to the results of science. The details of all too many historical connections Hill argues for have been criticized in the published debates, most conclusively by Theodore Rabb.31 Here it is necessary only to point to the divergence of Hill's thesis from Merton's in his seeking to explain specific developments in science by reference to Puritan doctrine.

As I have suggested above, in ascribing the genesis of the institutionalization of science to originally Puritan commitments, Merton refers to a broader sociological mechanism by which cultural values influenced the operations of English society. Compare Hill's view: "Both science and protestantism sprang from the shift by which urban and industrial values replaced those appropriate to a mainly agrarian society." This statement neglects any intervening sociological process, especially any process by which values influence types or patterns of action- unless Hill wants us to assume that the way in which a social group or society satisfies its economic needs somehow automatically generates appropriate values. But then this would ignore the fact that "urban and industrial" means of satisfying economic needs have been widespread at other times and places (e.g., Mediterranean antiquity), without however generating the feeling that doing science is especially virtuous. Indeed, it neglects the historical influence of values altogether. For sociological theory-at least the theoretical tradition with which the Merton thesis should be identified-holds precisely that widely held values are relatively independent of grosser or more tractable human needs such as the provision of economic want.32 But both Hill and his critic Kearney resort to economic factors to explain the rise in science (thus Hill rightly faults Kearney's statement that more convincing social factors in the rise of science would be changes in levels of wealth and leisure, as amounting to Hill's own economic interpretation of history), and both are subject to the same sociological critique.33 Hill does not concede that religion might have influenced cultural values and cultural values subsequently influenced the changing organization of society. What is the influence of religion in his view? "The Protestant Reformation," he tells us, "by overthrowing traditional authorities, by encouraging criticism of certain aspects of the catholic tradition, 'created a climate of opinion which pre- disposed some to be equally critical of dogma in science' " (here he quotes

31 Christopher Hill, "Puritanism, Capitalism and the Scientific Revolution," Past Pres., 1964, 29:88- 97, on p. 89; see H. F. Kearney, "Puritanism, Capitalism, and the Scientific Revolution," Past Pres., 28:81-101, on p. 94; Kearney, "Puritanism and Science: Problems of Definition," Past Pres., 31:104-110, on p. 108; Rabb, "Religion and the Rise of Modem Science" (cit. n. 1), p. 118. Mason's earlier work is cited in these articles; see also S. F. Mason, A History of the Sciences, rev. ed. (New York: Collier, 1962), pp. 175-191.

32 The sociological claim is that under conditions of exceptional value change in society, a process of institutional "take-off' may occur; see Eisenstadt, "Social Institutions," sections on "Institu- tionalization as a Process" and "Social Change in Institutional Systems," pp. 414a-416b, 418b-420a. Rostow originally made a similar claim for the effect of shifts in the economic sphere: see W. W. Rostow, The Stages of Economic Growth: A Non-Communist Manifesto (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1960).

33 Hill, "Puritanism," p. 96; Keamey, "Puritanism," p. 100.

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Kearney). Well and good; this sounds like Merton. "But what we may call the logic of protestantism-the dissidence of dissent-was always potentially present in protestant countries, liable to break out as soon as circumstances were propitious; they were in England after the breakdown of the church and its cen- sorship in 1640."34 This sounds reminiscent of Hall: religion can either smother human freedom or it can lift the oppressive veil from the free play of quite conscious human interests. The unique significance of the Reformation, Hill tells us elsewhere, lies in evolving a particular theology that was so ambiguous and "flexible" that "in any given society it enabled religion to be molded by those who dominated" that society.35 Thus Hill has no more freed himself of the invidious contrast between human freedom and necessity than the "internalist" historians of science; he simply opts for the side they reject.

This decision is reflected in Hill's characterization of Puritanism in Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution. It cannot be defined, he claims, independently of "science" and political "radicalism," but his thesis spells out the connections among these things precisely as separate entities. Thus Hill isolates specific doctrinal tendencies in "Protestantism" which, by their antiauthoritarianism, it seems, "unwittingly helped to create an atmosphere favorable to science." But the causation is sometimes said to go in the opposite direction as well: "on the whole, the ideas of the scientists favored the Puritan and Parlimentarian cause."36 But by defining both science and Puritanism in terms of radicalism, Hill is forced to deny that the Royal Society promoted the institutionalization of what he sees as the main value tradition associated with science: "It was the dissenting academies rather than the Royal Society that carried the radical Baconian tradition on to the Industrial Revolution. . . .,37

Hill usually discusses science in the "internalist" sense of particular scientific claims, for his thesis postulates a connection between the "Puritan tradition" and developments in astronomy, mathematics, and navigational art on the one hand, and on the other Paracelsan medicine. The timing and location of this connection-London after the Revolution-associates both sides of the connection with a common antiauthoritarianism, reflected both in the Baconian argument for the utility of science and in "puritan Parlimentarianism."38 Clearly, Hill grounds his version of the Puritan origins of science in a set of gross

34 Hill, "Puritanism," p. 85. 35 Christopher Hill, "Protestantism and the Rise of Capitalism," in Essays in the Economic and

Social History of Tudor and Stuart England, in Honor of R. H. Tawney (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1961), pp. 15-39, on p. 36. See also p. 27: "Protestant ministers had to tag along behind what seemed right to the consciences of the leading laymen in their congregations. ... It is here, through its central theological attitude [emphasis added], that protestantism made its great contribution to the rise of capitalism." These statements are clear departures from both Weber's interpretation of Puritanism in the broadest sense of its social impact and Weber's claim for the particular manner in which this social ethic influenced the nature of capitalist enterprise. For the former, see also William Haller, The Rise of Puritanism (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1938), esp. pp. 9- 48 and 83-127.

36 Christopher Hill, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965), quoting pp. 25 (cf. p. 180: "the theological doctrine of predestination ... prepar[ed] the way for the philosophy of mechanical determination," a sort of claim never found in Merton); 4-5 (cf. pp. 109-110: an "emphasis on the law-abiding nature of the universe" "fortified and gave a deeper significance to the Parlimentarian preference for the rule of law as against arbitrariness": cf. also p. 65). For Hill's thesis generally see pp. 25-26, 30-31 (esp. n. 4), 56, 119-122, 293-294.

37 Ibid., p. 129. Note that "Baconian science" = "Paracelsan and utilitarian traditions of popular London science" for Hill, p. 122.

38 Ibid., pp. 95-96, and Ch. 2, passim; pp. 119 (cf. pp. 125-130), 87.

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motivations having to do with personal commitment to rationalized doctrinal te- nets. Thus he goes to great lengths to establish the impeccable Protestant religious identities of certain scientists. In this regard Douglas Kemsley's critique of the various theological renderings of the Protestant ethic, in the theses of S. F. Mason, R. Hooykaas, Dorothy Stimson, R. F. Jones, and others, applies to Hill's thesis as well: that when compared with medieval Catholicism there was little that was new in Protestant dogma, and that late seventeenth-century spokesmen for English science emphasized its tolerance of purely dogmatic dif- ferences within Christianity.39 To place Merton in this company, as Kemsley and others do, is quite mistaken, however.

It is this provocative strategy of tying together certain doctrinal details and the social and ethical commitments said to be associated with doing science in the seventeenth century that has drawn all the attention of historians-whether those endorsing it or those criticizing it. Because the locus of this connection is a particular sort of individual identity (the political or religious radical in Hill's version of the thesis), it invites the many counterexamples that have been of- fered against it and, ultimately, in the case of the Hill thesis, some quantitative enumeration of the "radicals" versus the "conservatives" among members of the scientific community. This in turn leads to all the problems involved in for- mulating clear definitions of both Puritanism and science, which have dominated the polemics. But Merton's thesis did not share Hill's focus on individuals' identities; nor did it define Puritanism in terms of radicalism. The critics' correctly emphasized response to the Hill thesis, that a distinction must be made between "the scientific revolution" and the social movement surrounding the rise of science and powered in the main by dilettantes, is consistent with the Merton thesis and indeed concedes its main points.

Another contender for the legacy of the Merton thesis is Charles Webster, who goes so far as to adopt Merton's language of the "institutionalization" of science. Yet he, too, gives decidedly original turns to the argument that serve to obscure the original stresses and later defenses of Merton himself. More significantly, however, Webster goes beyond critical dispute to adopt a positive research strategy, a strategy that reflects the general trend among historians to carry their studies of the topic in a direction that cannot contribute directly to fresh evaluations of the Merton thesis.

Webster proceeds straightaway to conflate Merton's purposes by employing a notion of "institutionalization" derived from common usage, where it refers to a localized social grouping (often even confining this to a particular building!), but ignoring totally the distinction that underlies Merton's standpoint, between cultural facts (values) and the facts of social interaction and organizations. Webster refers specifically to three particular London groups of scientists as the crucial "institutions." The dates of these groups would perhaps stand in Mer-

39 See, e.g., Hill's attempts in ibid., pp. 22-24; see Douglas S. Kemsley, "Religious Influences in the Rise of Modem Science: A Review and Criticism, Particularly of the 'Protestant-Puritan Ethic' Theory," Annals of Science, 1968, 24:199-226. The critique also applies to T. K. Rabb, "Puritanism and the Rise of Experimental Science in England," Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, 1962, 7:46-67, esp. 53ff. Rabb's paper, however, is to be highly recommended for the wealth of apposite historical detail which, in my view, nearly always confirms the Merton thesis. Although he deals only with the pre-1640 period, a similar response should be made to the best example of this type of critique, John Morgan, "Puritanism and Science: A Reinterpretation," The Historical Journal, 1979, 22: 535-560.

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ton's own account as an index for the rise of "science, as a value." The value of science could not be accounted fully institutionalized until the establishment of public support for scientific organizations themselves. Merton's problem was to account for what he argued, on grounds of sociological theory, were the pre- conditions for science as a going concern, that is, a persistent change in values, supporting science. From this point of view the groups on which Webster bases his case for "institutionalization" (e.g., the invisible college, the Office of Ad- dress) did not persist, and so were as indices no different than earlier brief-lived organizations for studying science outside the normal university curriculum.40 Webster tells us (this seems to be the point of his peculiar sociology) that upon certain findings Merton concluded "that during the middle years of the seventeenth century, science 'had definitely been elevated to a place of high regard in the social system of values.' " But at the place cited Merton relied on contemporary accounts, all later than the Restoration.41 Moreover, Merton quotes these accounts to show the acceptability of scientific avocations to a narrow class, "gentlemen of culture." He evaluated this data more carefully than does Webster, concluding in fact that it "accounts largely for the significantly height- ened attention devoted to science toward the latter part of this period [the seventeenth century]"; this reduces the force of Webster's dating for the "institutionalization" of science considerably. Merton would only say that science "rose conspicuously" in esteem by mid-century, and his analysis would put the institutionalization of science instead after the Restoration.42 For Webster the formation of the Royal Society in 1660 is the culmination of "a smooth process of growth, diffusion and differentiation" (Hill takes a similar view), but in Mer- ton's view its formation at so late a date could show precisely that permanent disciplines and societies had not yet attained adequate support. Utopians, util- itarians, budding professionals, publicists all met in separate groups without any systematic intercommunication until the founding of the Royal Society. There was no way of knowing that all the disparate informal groups meeting around the most heterogeneous of ideal and material goals would come together (in part only!) in 1660, or (and this is crucial to the Merton thesis) that they would have security in such an action. Thus science was not institutionalized in the Mer- tonian sense, despite the founding of yet another (possibly ephemeral) institution in the common sense.

The date 1660 is therefore also less important than at first appears, for there was no assurance at that point that the Royal Society would indeed be a long- standing organization. Merton himself took the formation of the Royal Society to be "the best index" of the role of "the science-loving amateur" among "no- bles and wealthy commoners." "Science afforded them an opportunity of de- voting their energies to a highly honored task . . . as the comforts of unrelieved

40 Masters in medieval European universities, for example, used to hold regular meetings at their homes on feast-days for the study of extracurricular science (but students could study at length in this manner only so long as they enjoyed the residency of the individual master). See Guy Beau- jouan, "Motives and Opportunities for Science in the Medieval Universities," in A. C. Crombie, ed., Scientific Change (New York: Basic Books, 1961), pp. 219ff.

41 Webster, The Great Instauration, p. 488; citing Merton, Science, Technology, p. 28. Merton cites King Charles's reproving the Royal Society for refusing to admit the "trademan" John Graunt; Cowley and Dryden, two Restoration (and Royalist) poets; and a 1670 pamphlet by John Eachard (ibid., pp. 29-30).

42 Ibid., p. 27 (and n. 68); see also pp. 95-97 on the "shift to science."

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idleness vanished from the new scale of values."43 Webster's data on the trends in book publication show only an increased market during the Revolutionary years; that the appearance of most of these books in the vernacular shows that the demand "was not confined to the humanistically educated elite" does not mean that the market did not continue to be centered in the social and economic elite of "gentlemen." A market centered largely on the elite would not support Webster's conclusion that there was "dissemination of scientific information to a wider spectrum of the population" at that time, although the news of scientific activity might have subsequently spread widely, on account of the influence of the interests of the upper classes.44

The above critique of the Hill and Webster theses renders the dispute about the origins of the Royal Society, especially as regards the details of dating and the religious affiliations of members of precursor circles, as well as the early social composition of the Royal Society itself, irrelevant to the Merton thesis. These questions have been the exclusive focus, it seems, of historians of science and society in the seventeenth century, right up to the present.45 But Merton's real object of explanation is widespread public acceptance of the role of the scientist as indicated by continuous support of science in academies, societies, and universities. Webster concurs with the general historiographical opinion that the first indication of this phenomenon does not appear in England until the Royal Society attained security, with the royal charter in 1663 at the earliest, an event which occurs earlier than comparable events elsewhere (such as the founding of the Academie des Savants in Paris and the revival of the Collegium Naturae Curiosorum in 1670 at Schweinfurt, both of which modeled themselves on the Royal Society).46 It cannot be emphasized enough that these are all indices of (value) institutionalization and do not themselves constitute the social process of reception and acceptance of certain values to which the term institutionalization properly refers. That process was much less certain and more varied than Webster indicates. The critics of Hill have pointed out that Baconian scientific utopianism and utilitarianism, for example, and the commitments of most scientists themselves, had separate histories until the coming together of the diverse parties interested in science in the official Royal Society. Both Kear- ney and Hall stress the existence of more than one "Baconianism," a point already made by Merton. It has not been demonstrated that there were an ap- preciable number of "puritan Baconians," as Webster terms them, or precisely by what criteria we could identify them. Merton originally argued that the utilitarian argument for science had its own history, first associated with Puritan divines, and predating Bacon: no reference to Bacon in Merton fails to make

43 Ibid., p. 96. An argument based on a sociological perspective on value ideas can be set forth (it bears repeating) without picking out a "true strand" of "pure science" that was in the end destined to outlast all the rest of the ingredients that went into the making of the Royal Society. Compare Kearney, "Puritanism" and "Problems of Definition," and Hall and Hall, "Intellectual Origins," who tend to oppose London and Oxford. 44

See Webster, The Great Instauration, p. 490. See now the data in Hunter, Science and Society, Ch. 3, pp. 59-86, on the social composition of the early membership of the Royal Society, esp. pp. 73-74 and 81-82; cf. also pp. 120, 147.

45 In addition to Webster, The Great Instauration, see Hunter, Science and Society, and Lotte Mulligan and Glenn Mulligan, "Reconstructing Restoration Science: Styles of Leadership and Social Composition of the Early Royal Society," Social Studies of Science, 1981, 11:327-364.

46 See Ben-David, The Scientist's Role, Chs. 6 and 7; Preserved Smith, Origins of Modern Cul- ture, Vol. I (1932; New York: Collier, 1962), pp. 155-165; and Mason, History, pp. 256-266.

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this point.47 Merton also argues that Baconian inductivism, without an extra- Baconian appreciation of the role of theoretical interpretation, could not have advanced science (a view on which much of the early debate floundered).

But as I have already suggested, the varieties of Protestant orthodoxy were never really Merton's concern. His main claim, on the contrary, was that Prot- estant asceticism was a style of behavior that transcended Protestant orthodoxy and that it became an effective force for the institutionalization of "science, as a value" only when the ideal of ascetic manner became generalized beyond par- ticularistic religious roots. This claim in turn depends on a general view of historical processes of social change that sets him off from most of the historians who have ventured to comment on his classic work. Man is a social animal; that means he is motivated to gain social approval-he aims "at ensuring social good will, social status, social assets," to quote Karl Polanyi-as well as to achieve any other ends that may be peculiar to himself as an individual.48 This admixture of social and private motivations normally provides an absolute constraint on the manner and means he employs in achieving his ends. It is only when a man's society views the ends as laudable in themselves that he can be said to be in some measure "free" to pursue them, regardless of the power he may wield over his fellows. This "freedom" has existed for scientific endeavors at least since the professionalization of various sciences in the nineteenth century. Only in the eighteenth century did interest in the actual content of the new sciences spread to the public at large.49 But in the seventeenth century the worthiness of doing science had to be argued for, rationales had to be framed for its justification, and its value could not be taken for granted. What did it take to in- stitutionalize science in a society most of whose members identified religion, magic, and science indiscriminately as forms of manipulation of nature?50 This is the sort of question the Merton thesis poses. Some recent studies-including many critical reactions to Merton's book-help analyze the particular historical circumstances and date some important public issues referred to in part by Mer- ton. If more study were given to these problems, I think we would have strong confirmation of a crucial claim made in the Merton thesis: that fundamental changes were taking place in the English climate of opinion which had a direct bearing on the ability of scientists to pursue their callings with some measure of forseeable security in the long run.

EVALUATING MERTON'S THESIS

In conclusion I would like to suggest, however briefly, how some lines of recent research on science and society in seventeenth-century England point the way

47 See Webster, The Great Instauration, p. 492; Kearney, "Puritanism," pp. 94-99; Hall and Hall, "Intellectual Origins," pp. 158-161; cf. Merton, Science, Technology, pp. 69-70 (n. 77), 88-89 (and n. 17), 114 (n. 9).

48 I have generalized in the following from Karl Polanyi's critique of economic materialism; see, e.g., Polanyi, "Our Obsolete Market Mentality," Commentary, 1947, 3:109-117, rpt. in Primitive, Archaic and Modern Economies (New York: Beacon, 1971), pp. 59-77, quoting here p. 65.

49 See Hunter, Science and Society, pp. 191-192; Arnold Thackray, "Natural Knowledge in Cul- tural Context: The Manchester Model," American Historical Review, 1974, 79:672-709; and Everett Mendelsohn, "The Emergence of Science as a Profession in Nineteenth-Century Europe," in The Management of Scientists (Boston: Beacon, 1964), pp. 3-48.

50 See Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Scribners, 1971), pp. 222, 226-227, 275, 278; see also pp. 666-668.

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forward to serious evaluation of the Merton thesis. Properly understood, the Merton thesis forces us to disconnect the Protestant ethic from any specific doctrinal bases and to look instead for emerging social movements or schools of thought where it could find expression after the Calvinist branches became so many forms of rigidified traditionalism, toward the end of the first half of the seventeenth century. The second half of the century was marked by alternative claimants to "true religion" against the new varieties of orthodoxy. Owing to this kind of pluralist environment, and to the civil strife that contemporaries associated with it, an individual's public views on religion were thought in this period to be a direct indication of the type of behavior to be expected from him.51 This period also seems in retrospect to be an important turning point, at least in England, for the general image of science, for during it most scientists decided against the illuminist and hermetic movement and for the mechanical philosophy. This change was not straightforward. Against the progressive readi- ness to widen the audience for the communication of new knowledge, a conservative reaction at the end of the Renaissance reasserted the older idea of knowledge as an elitist preserve of absolute truths. Lay intellectuals responded by turning their energies to the secret truths, thus avoiding conflict with the political authorities. The hermetic movement combined a new emphasis on es- sentially incommunicable knowledge with an alternative intellectual elitism. But the ideal of "esoteric communication" fell, as William Bouwsma has recently pointed out, before "the movement toward broader, more flexible, steadily more accessible forms of communication." Bouwsma finds the theoretical basis of the latter ideal in humanist views of the practical significance of knowledge, which were in conflict with the contemplative direction in which adherents of the esoteric ideal invariably tended.52 Could it be that, in England, the indigenous Protestant inner-worldly activist rejection of contemplative or mystical forms of the religious life helped direct the public reception of science?53 Was the image of calm rationality now commonly associated with science determined in important points by public assent, outside the community of scientists, to the view that truth and the moral life were best ensured by the judicious and prudent temper, rather than by individual insight?

P. M. Rattansi showed convincingly in 1968 that such important figures as Petty and Boyle, acting in their capacity as publicists rather than as scientists, changed their loyalties from animistic and spiritualistic philosophies of science close to hermeticism, to the mechanical philosophy that triumphed later in the seventeenth century. They had this change of heart during the Interregnum years as a direct outcome of their reactions to rising Protestant enthusiasms and what they now saw (certainly not on the basis of any clear alternative scriptural tradition) as "arbitrary Scriptural interpretation" in the service of mystical "her-

51 Leslie Stephen spoke of the "preoccupation with the direct moral bearing of theology" after Hobbes. "Religion was regarded far less as providing expression for our deepest emotions, or as a body of old tradition invested with the most touching poetical associations, than as a practical rule of life." History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century, 2 vols. (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962), Vol. II, p. 2. See also Hunter, Science and Society, Ch. 7, esp. pp. 164-165, 183-187.

52 William Bouwsma, "The Renaissance and Broadening of Communication," in Harold D. Lass- well et al., eds., Propaganda and Communication in World History, Vol. II: Emergence of Public Opinion in the West (Honolulu: East-West Center, 1980), pp. 3-40, esp. pp. 33-37.

53 Weber, The Protestant Ethic, pp. 113-114, 118-125.

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esies which threatened religion and society."54 This demonstrates both that a scientific movement existed among some (mostly lay) English intellectuals which was quite independent of the main currents that would identify the scientific community established toward the end of the seventeenth century, and that a more general climate of opinion among publicists favored altering the cast of the entire intellectual community interested in science.

More recently James and Margaret Jacob have shown that such a turn on the part of the major publicists was to be necessary in the post-Restoration climate, for neutrality and nonpartisan hopes for general progress in society were at a premium then. They too see the publicistic battle being played out between those urging the more moderate utilitarian and reformist arguments for science, and those who emphasized its potential for radical democratic reform in religion and polity. Where they argue that a clear continuity exists between mid-century Pu- ritan reformers, whose adoption of science as the model of "patient, industrious scrutiny" amounted to an "update on the work ethic," and the "liberal Anglican origins of modern science," which they locate after the Glorious Revolution, they seem to be taking the Merton thesis forward. The various Anglican arguments brought to bear against the religious radicals employed the old Puritan rationales of ascetic sobriety in personal life. This is especially clear in the Ja- cobs' lively use of the Cambridge moderates (only in the next century dubbed "Platonists"), who attacked the inner-light illuminism of the Diggers and other radical sects.55 The Jacobs' research gives added weight to Merton's claim that the specifically Puritan cast of proposals for both social reform (he placed great stress on the Puritan derivations of the ideas of progress) and for discipline in personal life were important for the ultimate acceptance of science throughout society. It was (Merton argues) because only these values were widespread-in contrast to others merely logically compatible with scientific pursuits-that science was so well received in seventeenth-century England.56

Although Lewis Feuer has proposed an alternative thesis, that a "libertarian- hedonist ethic" was a significant force for science, Michael Hunter has attacked it, pointing to "the extent to which scientists aligned themselves with 'asceticism.' ,57 Much else in Hunter's recent book, along with the Jacobs' works, provides evidence that Calvinist values found expression in nonreligious institutions-evidence that would vindicate the Merton thesis. Yet both Hunter and the Jacobs dismiss the Merton thesis quickly, the former because the "value- orientation" of English society as a whole is simply an "imponderable," the

54 P. M. Rattansi, "The Intellectual Origins of the Royal Society," Notes Rec. Roy. Soc. London, 1968, 23(2):129-143, esp. pp. 136-137.

55 James R. Jacob and Margaret C. Jacob, "The Anglican Origins of Modern Science: The Meta- physical Foundations of the Whig Constitution," Isis, 1980, 71:251-267, esp. pp. 253-254, 258, 259-262. The inner-worldly asceticist commitment of the Cambridge men is brought out admirably in Edmund Leites, "On the Origins of Some Modern Ideas of Conscience: The Cambridge Plato- nists," Andover Newton Quarterly, 1980, 20:181-190. This essay has greatly influenced some of the formulations in this article. For an altogether contrary view of the Cambridge men, see R. Hooykaas, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdman's, 1972), p. 157, n. 4.

56 The revision just suggested also applies to the argument that the ideology of the Fellows of the Royal Society was designed to show concern for social harmony and order, in J. R. Jacob, "Res- toration, Reformation and the Origins of the Royal Society," History of Science, 1975, 13:155-176.

57 Lewis S. Feuer, The Scientific Intellectual (New York: Basic Books, 1963); Hunter, Science and Society, pp. 176-177; cf. also p. 30 for Sprat's ascetic formulations; but p. 210 for a positive evaluation of Feuer's thesis.

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GARY A. ABRAHAM

latter on the basis of a plain misunderstanding of what Merton claimed. Using "Puritanism" in the sense of religious dogma, they assert: "Merton did not address himself to the connections between Puritanism and scientific theory but only to those between Puritanism and scientific practice."58 Hunter and the Ja- cobs adopt instead a "political" view of the significance of the struggle of cultural values that they nevertheless narrate. This is why Hunter, for example, shows no interest in developing his observation on scientists' "asceticist" commitments, but instead expounds the purely dogmatic battles that took place around the need for a creator in any cosmology.59 But the political disputes these authors concentrate on could not be separated then-and indeed it remains even now difficult to separate them-from the deeply held beliefs of the public concerning the norms proper for any group activity that seems to impinge on the life of the national community.

Following the line of interest Merton first blocked out would also call for correction of current interpretations of "the latitudinarian spirit" or "ethos" of some of the central publicists for late seventeenth-century science, a problem that had already figured in the treatments of Hunter and the Jacobs. These are the phrases used by Frederic Burnham, who has stressed that the latitudinarians' revolt against "philosophical enthusiasm" was conceived as a struggle against "high words and uncertain flatuous notions that do but puff up the mind and make it seem full of itself' (in Henry More's words)-that is, as a struggle against the "philosophical" causes of behavior still sunk in natural necessity and sen- suality, or action dominated by the flesh, in the language of the first half of the century. Burnham also pointed out that the Cambridge Platonists inspired latitudinarianism and that they, like many others in this school, had originated from and rejected their "rigid Calvinist background."60 The contribution of the Mer- ton thesis to this line of investigation is to ask: what are the sources of the latitudinarian spirit, and how might knowing these sources influence our understanding of its content? As a hypothesis, the tentative answer "intramundane asceticism" makes sense of what is acknowledged as a central feature of this spirit: the repudiation of enthusiasm. But more than this, the Merton thesis sug- gests that we are in danger of taking too literally the "moderation" of these "latitude-men" and of forgetting that their name was given them by critical contemporary partisans, no doubt in part to impugn their lack of enthusiasm as indifference, and so as irreligion.61 Instead we should be ready to see their rec-

58 Hunter, Science and Society, p. 59; Jacob and Jacob, "Anglican Origins," p. 254. Merton in fact showed neither type of connection, and it is difficult to say whether anyone ever will. The Jacobs also claim that Merton, "like Webster, took no account of the dialectics of the Puritan revolution and the resulting dialogue between conservatives and radicals." Again this is not altogether true; while a detailed consideration was beyond the scope of his treatment, these elements are part of the Merton thesis, especially when he refers to "enthusiasm"; also Merton's treatment of Sprat and other propagandists anticipates the Jacobs' main point.

59 Hunter, Science and Society, pp. 178-187; the aspect of political partisanship dominates the whole book. Similarly, Jacob and Jacob, "Anglican Origins," p. 258: "Puritanism was transformed into liberal Anglicanism during and because of the Revolution" (emphasis added).

60 Frederic B. Burnham, "The More-Vaughan Controversy: The Revolt Against Philosophical En- thusiasm," Journal of the History of Ideas, 1974, 35:33-49, on pp. 37, 45, 43, and 38 (including nn. 18, 21).

61 Hunter, Science and Society, pp. 163-166, points out that anyone concerned with public order and individual morals might put under the heading of "atheism" religious indifference and enthusiasm, skepticism and dogmatism alike.

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ommendation of caution and reasonableness-do we now take these virtues too much for granted?-to the exclusion of speculation and more passionate routes to the truth as a positive religious alternative, if not a redefinition of the Chris- tian conscience. It will not do, therefore, to hold that moderation rather than Puritanism is a precondition for the rise of science, as Barbara Shapiro too easily does.62

To confirm or disconfirm the Merton thesis, more work has to be done on the nature of public opinion in late seventeenth-century England and after, and its actual significance for wider acceptances of scientists and their activities.63 The prospect, however, is not encouraging. For even some of the more balanced recent efforts to speak to the issues involved in the Merton thesis reflect the persistence of historians' general blindness to the motivating constraints of cultural values, and their inclination to allow individuals to have only the most conscious or, if not conscious, self-serving "motives."

62 Barbara Shapiro, "Latitudinarianism and Science in Seventeenth Century England," Past Pres., 1968, 40:16-41; and Shapiro, John Wilkins, 1614-1672 (Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1969), to which Hans Aarsleff, "John Wilkins," Dictionary of Scientific Biography (New York: Scribners, 1976) is a good corrective. On Christian conscience see Leites, "Moder Ideas of Conscience." For another study of science as antithetical to "enthusiasm," see Thomas Harmon Jobe, "The Devil in Restoration Science: The Glanvill-Webster Debate," Isis, 1981, 72:343-356. Jobe portrays the debate in terms of theologies and political power (see esp. pp. 345-346, 355-356); but the cultural and sociological perspective outlined here would shed a new light on his materials, consistent with the above suggestions.

63 Public opinion may have been understood to be a broader force than more recent views have it. For by the later 19th century in Europe and England "public opinion was a synonym of opinions expressed by the political representatives of the electorate, by newspapers, and by prominent members of organizations of the middle class," according to Hans Speier, "The Rise of Public Opinion," in Lassell et al., eds., Public Opinion in the West, pp. 147-167, on p. 163. Even from the narrowest political view of history, a period that could expect food riots must alter this view.

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