Merton thesis originated from Robert Merton´s arguments in a doctoral dissertation which was originally titled, ¨Sociological Aspects of Scientific Development in Seventeenth-Century England. The dissertation was concluded in 1936, and a revised version of it appeared in 1938 as a monograph in George Sarton´series, Osiris, with the new title, ¨Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. It was his erudite demonstration of the connections between religion and the rise of modern science that launched the historical sociology of science. The Merton Thesis has two distinct parts. Firstly, it says that the changes in the nature of science were due to an accumulation of observations and better experimental technique. Secondly, it proposes that the popularity of science in England in 17th Century, and the religious demography of the Royal Society (English scientists of that time were predominantly Protestants or Puritans) can be explained by a correlation between Protestantism and the values of the new science. He illustrated, specifically, that the English Puritanism and German
181 See Nathan Sivin, ¨Joseph Needham. Science and Civilisation in China: The Social Background, General Conclusions and Reflections, Vol 7, Part 2¨, in China Review International, 2005, 12: 297-307, See also, Nathan Sivin, ´Why the Scientific Revolution Did not Take Place in China- Or Didn´t it? The Edward H. Hume Lecture, Yale University, Chinese Science, 1982, 5: 45-66
182 See Mario Biagioli,¨Scientific Revolution, Social Bricolage, and Etiquette,¨ in The Scientific Revolution in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and Milukás Teich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp. 11-54; David C. Goodman, ¨The Scientific Revolution in Spain and Portugal,¨ in
Scientific Revolution in National Context, pp.158-77; John Henry, ¨The Scientific Revolution in England,¨
in Scientific Revolution in National Context, pp. 178-209; Daniel Banes, ¨The Portuguese Voyages of Discovery and the Emergence of Modern Science,¨ Journal of the Washington Academy of Science,1988, 28: 47-58; Noel Coley, ¨Science in Seventeenth-Century England,¨ in The Rise of Scientific Europe, eds.
Goodman and Russell, pp. 197-226; R. Hooykaas, Humanism and the Voyages of Discovery in 16th Century Portuguese Science and Letters (Amsterdam: North Holland, 1979)
Pietism were significant causes in the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. Hence, he attributes the connection between religious affiliation and sustained interest in science to a strong compatibility between the values of ascetic Protestantism and those associated with modern science.
Merton states thus;
¨The coincidence of such distinguished men of religion as ZWINGLI, LUTHER, CALVIN, KNOX, MELANCHTHON AND BEZA; of such dramatic and lyric poets as SPENSER, MARLOWE, SHAKSPERE AND JONSON; of such scientists as BOYLE, WREN, WALLS, HOOKE, NEWTON, HALLEY and FLAMSTEED cannot readily be attributed to the chance concurrence of individuals biologically endowed with predispositions toward special fields of activity. The more plausible explanation is to be found in the combination of sociological circumstances, of moral, religious, aesthetic, economic and political conditions, which tended to focus the attention of the geniuses of the age upon specific spheres of endeavor.¨183
Merton statement implies that the explanation for the great activities of these geniuses of that century has to be sought in the external factors (socio-economic, moral, religious, aesthetic and political situations) which in large measure account for the marked development of science and for the ´direction of interest into specific departments of inquiry.´184 However, the Merton thesis has been criticized on its two basic parts. This criticism is focused, firstly, on its insufficient consideration of the roles of mathematics and mechanical philosophy in the scientific revolution. The second criticism is on its arbitrary distinctions and statistical inaccuracies supporting his purported connection between Protestantism and the rise of science. Merton seem to
183 Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England, (New York:
Howard Fertig, 2001[1938]) p. 5; The original version was first published in 1938 as volume IV, part 2 of Osiris: Studies on the history and philosophy of science, and on the history of learning and culture.
(Burges: St. Catherine Press, 1938) 4(2), 360-632. See p. 364
184 Robert K. Merton, ¨Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England¨, Osiris, p.
365
have handled both science and religion as essentially homogeneous entities, as if throughout the course of the eventful century no significant changes had occurred in either of them. Also, the rise of the English science was explained exclusively through the Puritan ethic, whereas in reality the work pretended to demonstrate that not only was there mutual relationship between the two, there were other factors which might as well have been equally or perhaps even more important in accounting for the phenomenon of the scientific change.
2.8.1 ´MERTON REVISITED´
Merton had nowhere in the book claimed to explain, or had explained in fact, the rise of early modern science. He did not argue that the English Calvinist theology generated scientific innovation. He merely claimed, with many qualifications, that ´Puritans shared certain clusters of values that encouraged worldly endeavour, of which inquiries into Nature were a part´.185 Perhaps, it was ignorance of this fact that had led to numerous criticisms of the Merton thesis, and which Gary Abraham sought to clarify in Misunderstanding the Merton Thesis.186 It was Alfred R. Hall´s ¨Merton Revisited¨ that actually brought the Merton thesis into the focus of an explanation of the Scientific Revolution. Hall faulted the Merton thesis for its limitation of the rise of modern science to the case of England thereby making the account incapable of explaining the scientific revolution in its entirety, as it was supposed to have done.
Of course, this was not what Merton set out to do—to explain the Scientific Revolution in its entirety which will in this case involve all the prominent figures and the canonical subjects. He, however, sought to explain the rise of the science within the English context. In trying to make the Merton thesis a good account of the Scientific Revolution, Hall implied that it should have incorporated the conceptual overhaul accomplished by Galileo and Kepler and many others, and not just the bogus emphasis Merton made throughout his work of the Baconian aspect of early modern science.
185Nathan Sivin, ed., Joseph Needham: Science and Civilisation in China (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 2000) VI(6) p. 9
186 Gary A. Abraham, ¨Misunderstanding the Merton Thesis: A Boundary Dispute between History and Sociology¨, in Isis (Chicago Journals, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983) 74(3), 368-387
Hall´s disagreement with the Merton thesis is understood by his rejection of any attempt at ´external´ explanation of events in the history of ideas. In fact, Hall agreed more with the intellectualist approach of Alexandre Koyré in Études Galiléennes (1939). Hence, he asserted that ´Merton summed up one epoch, that of the socio-economic historian, Koyré opened another, that of the intellectual historian.´187
In Lilley revisited: or Science and Society in the Twentieth Century (2009) Vidar Enebakk, argued that Merton thesis was not the only target of attack in Hall´s ´Merton Revisted´. There was another explicit target, and this was Sam Lilley´s Essays on the Social History of Science (1953).188 Precisely, Hall refuted such sociological interpretation of science because it sustains the Marxist historiography of science which typifies a form of social reductionism or extreme externalism.
However, Steven Shapin dismissed such criticism by illustrating that Merton’s claims were ¨not to imply that the discoveries of Newton, Boyle or other scientists can be directly attributed to the sanction of science by religion. Specific discoveries and inventions belong to the internal history of science and are largely independent of factors other than the purely scientific.¨189 Hence, he affirms that it is, indeed, a plausible hypothesis that our present-day language of ¨internal¨ and ¨external¨ factors, as well as the validation of an overwhelmingly ¨internalist¨ historiography of scientific ideas, actually originated from Merton. Nevertheless, the Merton thesis´s illustration of viable interaction of socio-economic and religious forces as having incited the growth of science in England has some inspiration from Boris Hessen´s The Social and Economic Roots of Newton´s ´Principia´(1931)
187Alfred Rupert Hall, ¨Merton Revisted, or Science and Society in the Seventeenth-Century¨, History of Science, 1963, 2 , p.10
188 See Vidar Enebakk, ¨Lilley Revisited: or Science and Society in the Twentieth Century¨, in British Journal of History of Science (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 42(4), pp. 563-4
189 Steven Shapin, ¨Understanding the Merton Thesis¨, in Isis. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 79, p. 594