Last week I taught an essay by sociologist Robert Merton which I first read almost 30 years ago. Originally published in 1942, the essay is about the institutional norms of science in the context of broader society. He identifies several norms of science and suggests that they fit with the norms democracy.1
Although I have taught it something like 20 times before, when reading it through this semester, the opening paragraph hit me with a currency that it has never had before.
Science, like any other activity involving social collaboration, is subject to shifting fortunes. Difficult as the notion may appear to those reared in a culture that grants science a prominent if not a commanding place in the scheme of things, it is evident that science is not immune from attack, restraint, and repression. … The revolt from science which then appeared so improbable… has now been forced upon the attention of scientist and layman alike. Local contagions of anti-intellectualism threaten to become epidemic.
Current events are full up with the contagion of know-nothingism wielded by a president and an administration bent on destroying institutions which they see as potential threats to their unmitigated greed and lust for power. The dangers to democracy and to science are not merely coincident but at root the same.
- The balance between the theoretical issue (identifying norms of science) and the social concern (lauding democracy) shifted over the years. It was originally titled “Science and Technology in a Democratic Order”, reprinted later as “Science and Democratic Social Structure”, and later still as “The Normative Structure of Science.”