Social system of science
- New York "Holt, Rinehart And Winston" 1966
- 180p.
The sociology of science is a comparatively young branch of sociology, yet the healthy growth it has shown within the last few years suggests that it is not presumptuous now to concern ourselves with its conceptual integration. A field of knowledge can develop coherently only when an adequate conceptual framework is available, and while it may be premature to suggest that soci- ologists working in this field are already being divided into "theorists" and "experimentalists,” I think it is appropriate to consider the construction of a body of assumptions within which our research findings may be most fruitfully interpreted. This book, then, is an exercise in sociological theory- building. It attempts to develop a theory of the social organization of science. I have tried to indicate its possible broader relevance by pointing out certain basic parallels between the “social system” of science and other social systems within society. I hope, further, that the approach used-even if not the specific conclusions I have drawn from it may be useful in bridging the gap that seems now to exist between those sociologists who are concerned with society as an entity and who analyze social behavior in terms of its consequences for society as a whole and those sociologists who are concerned first of all with the motives, attitudes, and goals of the individual participants in these patterns of social behavior. My approach hopes to answer the question of why it is that most individuals, most of the time, come to "want" to do what it is that society "needs" them to do. Only when we can answer this question satisfactorily, can we develop a sociology capable of providing both prediction and meaning. To acknowledge all those who have contributed to my thinking, through creating the universe of discourse in which it has taken place, would be an exhaustive job. Yet those who have contributed more directly to it, in different ways and at different times, must be mentioned by name although none of them may be blamed for my own errors and shortcomings. To the following, then, I am particularly grateful: Theodore Abel, Bernard Barber, Joseph Ben-David, J. Stefan Dupre, William Evan, Henry B. Eyring, Barney G. Glaser, Gerald Gordon, Henry Guerlac, Warren 0. Hagstrom, Walter Hirsch, Donald A. Kennedy, Roger G. Krohn, Simon Marcson, Robert K. Merton, Nicholas C. Mullins, Donald Pelz, Don K. Price, and Herbert A. Shepard. Finally, for their special part in stimulating and encouraging me all along the line, let me thank Charles K. Warriner, Norman and Barbara Kaplan, Robin M. Williams, Jr., and Talcott Parsons. My sincere appreciation goes also to Miss Diana Meister and Mrs. Mary- Theresa Smith for their diligent labors in typing and retyping the manuscript.