The Other Merton Thesis

Written as one book, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England has become two. One book, treating Puritanism and science, has since become “The Merton Thesis.” The other, treating shifts of interest among the sciences and problem choice within the sciences, has been less consequential. This paper proposes that neglect of one part of the monograph has skewed readers' understanding of the whole. Society and culture contributed to institutionalization of science and the directions it took, neither one exclusively. Four aspects of the neglected chapters are examined: (1) their theoretical underpinnings, the conceptions providing foundations for this part specifically and for the monograph as a whole; (2) their comparative neglect, attributed partly to the absence of a cognitive constituency for their claims; (3) the problem of problem choice in science in Merton's work; and (4) the Merton monograph and later social constructionism:their differences and affinities.