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The Fallacy of the Latest Word: The Case of "Pietism and Science"Author(s): Robert K. MertonSource: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 89, No. 5 (Mar., 1984), pp. 1091-1121Published by: The University of Chicago PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2779084.
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The
Fallacy
of
the Latest Word: The Case
of
"Pietism and Science"'
Robert K. Merton
Columbia University
The resiliency exhibited by some theories or derived hypotheses,
despite
their
periodically
"conclusive"
refutation,
is
examined
by
taking
the
generic hypothesis
on the
connection between ascetic
Protestantism and the emergence of modern
science as a case in
point. Refutations proposed in the Becker critique of the specific
instance of Pietism and science strengthen
rather
than
weaken the
grounds for deepened interest in exploring both the generic and
specific hypotheses
insofar
as
the
critique
exhibits
the
fallacy
of
the
latest word. That fallacy rests on three common but untenable tacit
assumptions: (1)
that the
latest word
correctly
formulates
the
essen-
tials of the
preceding word while being immune to the failures
of
observation
and
inference imputed
to
what went before, (2) that
each
succeeding
work
improves
on its
knowledge base,
and
(3) that
theoretically
derived
hypotheses
are
to
be
abandoned as soon
as
they
seem to be empirically falsified. An Appendix examines evidence
on
the sociohistorical particulars
of the case.
Since it
appeared
in
the
mid-1930s,
the
hypothesis
connecting
Puritanism
with the rise of modern science
(Merton 1935;
[1936] 1968; [1938] 1970)2
1
This paper was supported
in part by a grant from the National Science Foundation
(SES 79 27238).
I
am indebted
to Annette Bernhardt, Karen Ginsberg, and, most
especially, Alfred Nordmann for research aid and to Harriet
Zuckerman, Robert
C.
Merton, Vanessa Merton, and
Byron Shafer for thoughtful suggestions. Requests for
reprints should be sent to Robert K. Merton, Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University,
New York, New York 10027.
2
Begun
in
1933, completed
as a doctoral dissertation in 1935,
partly published in the
form
of
three selected articles between
1935 and
1937,
this monograph
was
fully
published in 1938, appearing in Osiris: Studies on the
History and Philosophy of
Science at the invitation of
its founder-editor and my teacher, the doyen of historians
of science, George Sarton.
The citation
in
my
text
expressly
includes the 1935 disser-
tation, "Sociological Aspects
of Scientific Development in
Seventeenth-Century En-
gland," deposited
in
Harvard's
Widener Library, although
the Becker critique pays
no mind to this earliest version of what Kuhn (1977, p. 115-22)
and other historians
of science have come to describe
as
"the Merton thesis."
The
reference to
the
1935
document is intended as a reminder that this and the other formulations of a similar
hypothesis in the mid-1930s (Stimson 1935;Jones [1936] 1961,
1939) were independently
developed and, to this extent,
were mutually confirming rather
than any one of them
being derived from the others.
(C 1984 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0002-9602/84/8905-0005$01.50
AJS Volume
89 Number 5 1091
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AmericanJournal of
Sociology
has
been frequently
assessed and
elaborated. So far as
I
know,
however,
the
article by
George
Becker
(1984)
is
the first
critique devoted
to
a
derivative hypothesis briefly set forth in those same writings which pro-
poses
similar
connections
between
Pietism
and
science.
The
Becker cri-
tique
serves several
useful
purposes. To begin
with, it provides
occasion
for
reexamining the
substantive
sociohistorical
questions
which
it
raises.
It
might also
lead a few
dedicated
readers to
examine the sources
listed
above
(rather
than the one
article
singled out
in
the
critique) to
see
for
themselves how far
that
critique captures
the basic
argument and its
theoretical
grounding.
Beyond that
and
perhaps
more
in
point
for
the
rapidly developing
sociology
of
science,
it
provides
an
instance
of
the
workings of the institutionalized norm of "organized skepticism": social
arrangementsfor the
critical
scrutiny of
knowledge claims
in
science
and
learning that
operate
without
depending on the
skeptical
bent of this or
that
individual (Merton
[1942]
1973,
pp.
277-78, 311, 339,
467-70; Storer
1966,
pp. 77-79,
116-26;
Zuckerman 1977,
pp.
89-93, 125-27). In
that
regard, the
critique
affords an
instructive example
of the
"fallacy of the
latest
word": the
tacit
assumption that the
latest
word is the best
word.
Elucidation of that
fallacy,
which has a
way of
turning up with
some
frequency
in
the
give-and-take of
cognitive
disagreements
in
the
domain
of science and scholarship, involves the puzzle presented by the Phoenix
phenomenon in
the historyof
systematic thought: the
continuing resiliency
of
theories or
theoretically derived
hypotheses such as
Durkheim's on
rates of
suicide
([1897] 1951) or Max
Weber's
on the role of
ascetic Prot-
estantism
in
the
emergence of modern
capitalism ([1904-5]
1930)
even
though
they
have
been
periodically
subjected
to
much and
allegedly
con-
clusive
demolition
("falsification").3
These generic
problems
in
the
sociology
of
science
provide
contexts for
examining the broad
implications of
the
Becker
critique.
Instances
of
fundamental
thematic
relevance-such
as the place of
extrascientific
bases
in
the
legitimation of early
modern
science-will be
considered
in
con-
junction
with the
fallacy
of
the
latest word and
organized skepticism.
However, Becker's
specific
charges of faulty
readings of the
evidence by
the
mid-1930s author
of the work under
examination
will be
considered
3The
Phoenix phenomenon
clamors for
systematic attention from
historians and so-
ciologists of science
concerned to clarify
the
significant role of controversy in
the growth
of scientific
knowledge.
However, limitations of space and
empathy for
a
fellow editor
forbid analysis of that phenomenon here and now. For contextual observations on the
social and cognitive
structure, dynamics,
functions, dysfunctions, and
sociology-of-
knowledge
significance of
controversies
in
science see Merton
([1961] 1973), Nowotny
(1975),
Markle and
Petersen (1981), and Scientific
Controversies, edited
by
A.
L.
Caplan and H.
T.
Engelhardt, Jr. (1984), especially
the
essays by
Ernan
McMullin
("How Do
Scientific Controversies End?")
and Everett
Mendelsohn ("The Political
Anatomy of
Controversies
in the Sciences").
1092
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The
Latest Word
separately. Since these criticismslargely
involve
conflicting interpretations
of German Pietist history,
dogma, and practice that have long been de-
bated by specialists, many may find them of remote interest despite their
substantive relevance. For
that reason, the specifics
in
Becker's
bill
of
indictment and their rebuttals are
sequestered
in
an
Appendix
of
Socio-
historical Particulars. It should be said
that
the
Appendix
took some
doing
by way of reassembling the
evidence
in
point. For, as may come as no
surprise, the author had failed
to keep the abundant notes prepared for
a
dissertation (and the subsequent article and monograph) written half a
century ago. (Still this episode
provides
an
object
lesson for
others:
do
not discard library, field, or laboratory notes prematurely; socially or-
ganized skepticism may operate imperfectly but it can work tenaciously.)
Anticipating the substance of
the Appendix,
I
must report that Merton
seems
to me to have been wrong on some details of exegesis and Becker
right, while on other and rather
more frequent details it seems to be moot
or
quite
the other
way.
But when it comes
to the
fundamental thematic
components of the hypothesis that relates Pietism to the emerging insti-
tution of
science,
it
appears
to
me
that
the
critic
is
on the
whole
mistaken,
not least as a result of having
overlooked the basic theoretical contexts
of
the sociohistorical particulars.
THEORETICAL CONTEXTS
AND
EMPIRICAL
KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS
The generic hypothesis under
discussion holds that at a time
in
Western
society
when science had
not
become elaborately institutionalized,
it ob-
tained
substantial
legitimacy
as an unintended
consequence
of
the
reli-
gious ethic and praxis of
ascetic Protestantism.
In
developing this
hypothesis, Merton undertook to examine the linkages of 17th-century
English Puritanism and science
in
some detail and went on to consider,
as an
empirical corollary, the possible
linkages
of the
contemporary
Ger-
man
Pietism
and
science.
This
extension can
be
described
as brief
if
it
is
agreed that
a
total
of
three pages (Merton [1936] 1968, pp. 643-45)
focused
on
Pietism
constitutes brevity. It
is
primarily
those
three
pages
which
have been subjected to the intensive
Becker critique.
The
critique
also
considers
briefly
the four
subsequent pages,
which
were given
over to
statistical data showing some
proclivity
for
19th-century
Protestant
youngsters (not Pietists, since statistical data on detailed sectarian affil-
iations
were simply not to be had) to enter the science-and-technology
oriented Realschulen.
The
paucity
of
these
crude
19th-century
statistical
data
in
contrast
to
the abundance of
highly
differentiated data on the
religious, social,
and
economic
status
of
students
today
has its own
interesting theoretical
im-
1093
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American Journal
of
Sociology
plication. It suggests that the enduring scholarly
interest in the proposed
ascetic Protestantism-science linkage cannot reside
simply
in
that rather
limited, empirically identified correlation between religious affiliation and
interest in science. Much more controlled empirical generalizations are
now so easily come by that a crude statistical report of
this
kind
would
presumably be given short shrift. It surely would not engender a detailed
critique
half a
century
later. There must be
more
to the
hypothesis
than
the mere
correlation-as, indeed,
there is
when
one considers
the
theo-
retical contexts of the inquiry instead of confining oneself to
this
or
that
bit of
pertinent empirical
evidence.
The abiding interest in some empirical generalizations
and
lack of
sustained interest in others stem from the logical location of the particular
generalization.
A
continuing interest
is more
apt to
obtain
when the
particular sociohistorical finding is grounded
in
a
broader theoretical
framework which has proved to be substantively
instructive and heur-
istically fruitful. This,
I
suggest, is the case with the hypothesized
linkages
among Puritanism, Pietism, and science. Yet, having cited Science,
Tech-
nology and Society
in
Seventeenth Century England
in
its
very
first sen-
tence,
the
Becker
critique manages
to
maintain
a
perfect
silence about
parts
of
that monograph, readily accessible since
1938,
which
provide
the theoretical contexts of those three pages devoted to Pietism. It also
unaccountably ignores the author'spost-1936 indications
of
the successive
levels of theoretical abstraction in the monograph
that are set forth in
books
that Becker cites (Merton 1968, pp. 649-60; [1938] 1970, pp.
vii-
xxix) but does not fully utilize, as though amplifications beyond those
three
pages
and the
handful of
pages
on
religious
statistics
which he does
consider were somehow off limits.
Owing
to that
neglect
of theoretical
context,
the
critique
does
not and,
more
important, as a matter of
prin-
ciple, cannot strike
at
the sociological jugular
of the
generic
hypothesis
linking religion and science. For a text removed from
its context cannot
be
properly understood
or
paraphrased.4 As a result, the Becker
critique
can
at the most correct a
reading
of this or that
specific
bit of
evidence
while
managing,
as
we
shall
see
in
considering
the
fallacy
of the
latest
word,
to
introduce
questionable readings
of
other cited evidence and thus
to
produce
an
appreciated but basically modest
revision of
detail.
4 To reduce, not to obviate, such inadvertent misrepresentations, this paper will quote
relevant passages at length, since it cannot be supposed that readers will themselves
uniformly turn to the quoted sources. Indeed, the presumption of general trustwor-
thiness, rather than total freedom from error, underlies the system of organized skep-
ticism in science and scholarship. Members of the scholarly community therefore need
not confront the impossible task of individually studying
for themselves all the sources
of collateral interest to them. That function is assigned to peer reviewers
and
adopted
by
others
having
a
specialized
interest
in
particular subjects
and
problem
areas.
1094
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The
Latest Word
Levels of Theoretical Abstraction in Sociohistorical Inquiry
Briefly summarized, three levels of substantive theoretical abstraction
give the original study whatever sociological significance it may have:
1. Least abstract level: the socio-historical
hypothesis
Ascetic Protestantism helped
[n.b.]
motivate and canalize the activities
of men'
in
the
direction
of
experimental
science. This is
the
historical
form
of
the
hypothesis. [Merton 1968,
p.
589]
A critically relevant context describes the logical status of such a so-
ciohistorical
idea
in
these terms:
It would have been fatuous for the author to maintain, as some swift-
reading commentators upon the book would have him maintain, that, with-
out Puritanism, there could have been no concentrated development of
modern science in seventeenth-century England [or, mutatis mutandis, with
regard to Pietism and science in Germany]. Such an imputation betrays a
basic failure to understand the logic of analysis and interpretation
in
his-
torical sociology.
In
such analysis,
a
particular concrete historical devel-
opment cannot be properly taken as indispensable to other concurrent
or
subsequent developments.
In
the case
in
hand,
it
is certainly
not
the case
that Puritanism
[or Pietism] was indispensable
in
the
sense
that
if it
had
not found historical expression at the time, modern science would not then
have emerged. The historically concrete movement of Puritanism [or Pie-
tism] is not being put forward as a prerequisite
to the
substantial thrust
of
English [or German]
science
in that
time; otherfunctionally equivalent
ideological movements could have served to provide the emerging science
with
widely acknowledged
claims to
legitimacy.
The
interpretation
in this
study assumes
the
functional requirement of providing socially
and cultur-
ally patterned support for
a
not yet
institutionalized
science;
it
does not
presuppose that only Puritanism [or Pietism] could have served that func-
tion. [These preceding italics are added.] As
it
happened, Puritanism [and
Pietism] provided major (not exclusive) support
in
that historical time
and
place. However, and this requires emphasis, neither does this functional
conception convert Puritanism [or Pietism] into something epiphenomenal
and
inconsequential. It,
rather than
conceivable
functional
alternatives,
happened to advance the institutionalization of science by providing a
substantial
basis
for
its
legitimacy. [Italics added.]
But the
imputed
drastic
simplification that would make Puritanism [or Pietism] historically
indis-
pensable only
affords
a
splendid specimen
of the
fallacy
of
misplaced
ab-
straction
(rather
than
concreteness).
It
would
mistakenly
have the author
undertake
an
exercise
in
historical
prophecy (to adopt
the convenient term
that Karl
Popper
uses to describe
efforts
at
concrete historical forecasts and
retrodictions), even though the much less assuming author
himself had
only
tried his hand at an analytical interpretation in the historical sociology of
science.
[Merton (1938) 1970; preface, pp. xviii-xix]
5The
reference
to "men" sans women in this quoted passage
is no inadvertent sexist
statement; there
simply
was no
place
provided for women during
the 16th and 17th
centuries in what
was known first as "natural philosophy" and
later as "natural science."
1095
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American
Journal of Sociology
In
the light of this emphatically formulated
hypothesis that ascetic
Protestantism,
ncluding
Pietism, served
to legitimatea nascent
and
slightly
institutionalized science, it is passing strange to find Becker arguing at
length, as though he were
making a
new, different, and
opposed
obser-
vation, that the
Pietists
had a
fundamental
indifference,
if
not
outright hostility,
toward
all
knowledge,
in
whatever
discipline,
should
it
fail to
display
a
perceptible religious
con-
nection.
As
Francke
insisted,
for
example,
"All
sagacity, by whatever
name,
must have the honoring
of
God as
its goal
and
purpose
and it
must
employ
all
other means
on
behalf of
this
holy purpose" (in Heubaum
1893, p. 75).
[Can
this be the
archetypal
Pietist
leader Francke
speaking,
or is it
the
"'most representative Puritan in history,'"Richard Baxter (as quoted from
Flynn [1920],
p. 138, by Merton
[(1938) 1970], p.
60)?]
In
keeping
with this
dictum,
virtually every aspect
of
Pietist
education
tended
to
be
planned
and
legitimated by reference
to
religious objectives.
[Becker 1984, p.
1075]
.
.
.To be
certain, the primacy
assigned
to the
religious
motive was
not
entirely negative
in
its
consequences
for scientific
education.
The
study
of
the
natural
sciences
was
justifiable
not
only
as
a
means
of
promoting
re-
ligious
conviction but also as
a
potential tool
in
the
service
of
"good
works"
and collective
well-being.
Significantly, however,
this
same
religious
motive
also
tended
to
impose
limits on
the
study
of science
and the
quest
for
new
scientific
principles.
The
danger
always
existed
that this
study
would be-
come disassociated from religious concerns and that the fruits of such study
would lead to scientific claims and
knowledge
incompatible
with
established
theological
precepts. [Becker
1984, p. 1076]
As for Pietist
religious
opposition to immediate
"scientific
claims and
knowledge
incompatible with
established
theological
precepts," this pat-
tern,
too,
has
been noted
concerning the
great Reformers:
Luther, Me-
lanchthon, and
Calvin. As these
"attitudes of the
theologians dominate
over
the,
in
effect, subversive religious
ethic-as
did Calvin's authority
largely in
Geneva until the
first part of
the eighteenth
century-scientific
development may be greatly impeded.
.
.
. The implications of
these
dogmas found
expression
only with the passage of
time"
(Merton
[1938]
1970,
pp.
100-101). In short-and this,
of course, is one of
the principal
components
of
the
generic
sociohistorical hypothesis under
review-de-
spite such
immediate opposition to
seemingly dangerous
thoughts
in
sci-
ence, the
long-run consequences of
the
"sanctification of science"
as
exhibiting the "true
Nature of the
Works of God" and
as
contributing "to
the
Comfort of
Mankind" became
thoroughly secularized
as
the
religiously
legitimated institution and
practice of science developed. That such sanc-
tification can
ultimately
lead
to
secularization
is
precisely
the
sociohis-
torical
irony
under
examination.
2.
Middle-range
level:
dynamic
interdependence
of
the social
institutions
of religion
and
science
In its
more
general
and
analytical
form,
it
[the
hypothesis]
holds
that
1096
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The
Latest Word
science, like all
other social
institutions,
must
be supported
by values
of the
group
if it
is
to
develop.
There
is,
consequently,
not the
least
paradox
in
finding
that even so rational an
activity as scientific
research
is
grounded on
non-rational values. [Merton
1968, p.
589]6
The
theme of
Puritanism-and-science seemed
to
exemplify the "ideal-
istic"
interpretation
of history
in
which values
and
ideologies expressing
those values are
assigned a significant
role
in
historical
development.
The
[correlative] theme [in this
study] of the
economic-military-scientific
interplay seemed to exemplify the
"materialistic"
interpretation of history
in which the
economic substructure
determines the
superstructure of
which
science is
a
part. And,
as
everyone knows, "idealistic"
and "ma-
terialistic" interpretations
are
forever alien to one another,
condemned
to ceaseless contradiction
and
intellectual warfare. Still, what
everyone
should know from the history of thought is that what everyone knows
often turns out not to be
so
at all. The
model
of interpretation advanced
in this
study does
provide for the mutual
support and independent con-
tribution to the
legitimatizing
of science of both
the
value
orientation
supplied
by
Puritanism
[and
Pietism]
and the
pervasive belief in, perhaps
more
than the
occasionalfact of,
scientific solutions to
pressing economic,
military
and
technological problems.
[Merton (1938)
1970, preface, p.
xix;
italics
added]
3. Most
general
and abstract level: the
dynamic interdependence
of
social
institutions
A
principal sociological idea
governing
this
empirical inquiry holds that
the
socially patterned
interests,
motivations and
behavior
established
in
one institutional
sphere-say,
that
of religion
or
economy-are
inter-
dependent
with
the
socially patterned
interests,
motivations and
behavior
obtaining
in
other institutional
spheres-say,
that
of science. There are
various kinds
of such
interdependence,
but we
need touch
upon only
one of
these here.
The same individuals have
multiple
social
statuses
and
roles
[status-sets
and
role-sets]: scientific and
religious
and
economic
and
political.
This
fundamental linkage
in
social structure in itself
makes
for some
interplay
between
otherwise distinct institutional
spheres
even
when
they are
segregated
into
seemingly autonomous
departments
of
life. Beyond that, the social, intellectual and value consequences of what
is
done
in
one institutional domain
ramify into
other institutions, even-
tually
making for
anticipatory
and
subsequent concern
with
the
inter-
connections of
institutions.
Separate
institutional
spheres are
only partially
autonomous, not
completely
so.
It
is
only after
a
typically prolonged
development
that social
institutions, including
the
institution of
science,
acquire a
significant degree of
autonomy. [Merton
(1938) 1970, preface,
pp. ix-x]
6
As early as the mid-1930s, even a logical positivist such as Rudolf Carnap would be
writing, soon after the Merton 1936 article which he surely did not know, that
"psy-
chology and the social sciences . . . must locate the irrational [better: nonrational]
sources of both rational and illogical thought" (Carnap 1937, p. 118). This is akin to
the "Copernican revolution" in the sociology of knowledge which consists in the basic
"hypothesis that not only error, illusion, or unauthenticated belief but also the
discovery
of truth is socially (historically) conditioned. As long as attention was focused only on
the social determinants of ideology, illusion, myth, and moral norms, the sociology of
knowledge could not emerge" (Merton 1968, pp. 513-14).
1097
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Sociology
This condensed
sketch of the
successively abstract theoretical contexts
of the
sociohistorical
hypothesis requires
some theoretical and
methodo-
logical explication. It has, I believe, implications that extend much beyond
the
study
under review.
A
Counterintuitive and
Counterpositivistic
Hypothesis
First, it is proposed that continuing
interest
in
the specific sociohistorical
hypothesis derives from
its being identified as a case
in
point of the
varied
nature of dynamic interactions between
the institutions of
religion and
science
in
differing
sociohistorical contexts. It
is this
middle-range hy-
pothesis which was at the bottom of that inquiry mounted half a century
ago. The
hypothesis had a
distinct
theoretical
interest
all
its own-back
in
the
1930s, since it ran counter to the received
positivistic lore
of
the time
which
declared
as
virtually self-evident that the
principal,
if
indeed not
the
unique, relation between science and
religion was
one of
conflict and
clash. At least to
those
reared on
such books with their
positivistic
titles
as John W. Draper's
History of
the
Conflict
between
Religion
and
Science
(1875
and many more editions, with
translations into 10
languages) and
Andrew
D.
White's
History of
the
Warfare
of
Science with
Theology
in
Christendom (1896), it seemed improbable, if not downright absurd, that
a
religious
ethic and
praxis
could
have contributed
to
the
legitimation
and
advancement
of
science
which,
it
appears,
was
steadily
engaged
in
undermining the
dogmatic foundations of
theology
and
religion. Witness
only
the heretical fate of
Giordano
Bruno,
burned alive after trial
by
the
Catholic
Inquisition,
and
Michael
Servetus,
denounced
by
Calvin and
burned alive after trial
by
the
magistrates
of Geneva. In
good positivistic
style
of a
parochial sort,
it
was no
great leap
from such
exemplary episodes
to
a belief
in
the
logical
and
historical
necessity
for
conflict between
religion and science in all their aspects.7
The
Role of
Rationality
in
Emerging
Modern
Science:
Pietism
as a
Strategic Polar Case
The 1930s study
undertook the collateral
inquiry into a possible Pietism-
science
connection to
supplement
the
fairly
detailed and extensive
inquiry
into
the
Puritanism-science connection. As
expressions
of
ascetic Prot-
estantism,
the two had much
in
common.
Indeed,
the
17th-
and
18th-
7Since this theoretical
context is not being
newly identified,
the paragraph
continues
to draw on
the 1970 preface to the Merton (1938) monograph.
The legendary
aspects
of the life
and mind of the
Hermetic magician
and
scientist
Bruno are handled
in
magisterial
style by Yates (1964);
Mason
(1953) deals with the
relation of
Servetus to
Calvin
in
connection
with the new astronomy and
the
discovery
of the lesser
circulation
of the
blood.
1098
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The Latest Word
century Cotton Mather, the celebrated
Puritan minister
who was
himself
deeply devoted to
the new
science,8
had noted the
close resemblance
of
such Protestant movements, remarking that " 'ye American puritanism
[is] . . . much of a piece with ye Frederician
pietism'
"
(retrieved
from
the archives by Kuno Francke
[1896], p. 63, and quoted by
Merton
[(1936)
1968], p. 643).
More specifically and more
in
point for the sociohistorical
hypothesis
under review,
Pietism
shared
all but one of the
elements of the
Puritan
ethos which had been taken to contribute to the rise
of modern
English
science. Briefly itemized, these elements
of Puritanism were
(1)
a
strong
emphasis
on
everyday
utilitarianism, (2)
intramundane interests
and ac-
tions (Weber's "inner-worldly asceticism"), (3) the belief that scientific
understanding
of
the world of nature
serves
to
manifest the
glory
of God
as "the
great Author of Nature," (4) the
right and
even the
duty
to
chal-
lenge various forms of authority, (5) a strong streak of antitraditionalism,
all
these coupled with the exaltation of both
(6) empiricism
and
(7)
ra-
tionality. Albeit with differing
degrees of intensity of adherence
to
some
of these
elements, the
ethos
of Pietism was
significantly equivalent, except
for
the strong exception of an emphasis on
rationality.
It is
well known that Pietism,
in
its various forms, was given to "en-
thusiasm and irrationalism,"emphasizing "the emotional as opposed to
the
rational"
(Pinson 1934, chap.
1
and
p. 36). Thus, just
as
Quakerism
and the later "enthusiastic"
Methodism provided cases that bear on the
relative significanceof rationality for an emerging interest in science within
the
English tradition, so, too,
it was
assumed,
would
"enthusiastic" Pie-
tism as a weaker
counterpart
in
Germany.
Max Weber had
made
ana-
lytical comparisons among the
varieties of Anglo-American Puritanism
and Pietism. For the immediate
purposes of the 1930s study, most in point
was his conclusion that "all
in
all, when we consider German Pietism
from the
point of view important for us, we must admit a vacillation and
uncertainty
in
the
religious basis of
its
asceticism which makes
it
definitely
weaker than
the
iron
consistency
of
Calvinism,
and
which is partly the
result of Lutheran
influence and
partly of its emotional character"(Weber
[1904-5] 1930, pp. 128-39, at p.
137;
italics
added).
In
drawing
on Weber's
observations on this emotional element in Pie-
tism,
the Becker
critique apparently
fails to
recognize
that it is
precisely
this difference
from many Puritan sects
which made Pietism a strategic
8
"One of the persistent popular fallacies is the belief that the American pulpit, dom-
inated
throughout
the
period by New
England
Puritanism,
was
antagonistic
to
science.
It
was, on the
contrary,
a
powerful ally
in
many
instances.
.
. .
Increase
and
Cotton
Mather, the foremost
American
Puritans . . .
labored
earnestly
to
use science as
a
bulwark for
religion,
and in the course of this
self-appointed
task
served an
important
educational function"
(Hornberger [1937], p.
13;
for
details,
see
Hornberger
[1935]
and
the
monumental volumes by
Perry Miller,
The
New
England Mind
[(1939) 1954]).
1099
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American Journal of Sociology
polar
case for
examining
the relative importance
of
rationality
for
creating
an interest
in science and for
conferring religiously
based
legitimacy
on
the emerging science. In this the critique cannot be greatly faulted. For
though the Merton study of
the 1930s cautiously qualified
the similarities
between
Puritanism and Pietism
by alluding
to the
variously mystical
"enthusiasm"
of the Pietist
movements,
it did so much too
sparingly
(owing perhaps
to the
unimposed
constraints of that
three-page
discus-
sion). This it did
in
the following excessively condensed,
imperfectly
expressed, formally unexplicated,
and therefore rather
enigmatic
for-
mulation of the logic underlying the selection of Pietism
as a
potentially
strategic
case for
comparison
with the more
thoroughly
examined case
of
English Puritanism: "Pietism, except for its greater 'enthusiasm,' might
almost be
termed the continental
counterpart
of Puritanism.
Hence,
if
our
hypothesis
of the association
between Puritanism
and interest
in
sci-
ence and
technology
is warranted,
one would
expect
to
find the same
[sic]
correlation among
the Pietists. And such
was
markedly
the case"
(Merton
[1936] 1968, p. 643;
italics
added).
With the wisdom
of some 50
years
of
hindsight
and
selective accu-
mulation of knowledge (and,
more dubiously,
with the alleged wisdom
of
age),
I
am inclined to fault Merton's
early study
at this
point,
as Becker
does not, in three related respects. First, the study could have emphasized
the
point
that the element of
rationality
in
a
supportive
religious
ethos is
evidently
not a
necessary
condition
for a derived interest
in
science and
that the other
elements
in
the Pietist ethos
were robust
enough
to
generate
such interest.
Second,
it
now seems
evident that the cases of Pietism
and
Puritanism
could
have been compared
in
detail,
at least
in
qualitative
fashion, to
assess the
relative
importance
of
differing
intensities of adherence to each
of the elements and to
consider
how each of
these,
as well as clusters of
them, may
have contributed differentially
to the
legitimizing
of newly
emerging
science.
Third,
the
study might
have taken further advantage of the strategic
polar
cases to isolate the role of
rationality
in
affecting
the kinds of
science
that became of
prime
interest, instead of confining the
inquiry to the
question
of an interest
in
the sciences
generally.
That line of
inquiry
(suggested
to me
by
Robert C. Merton) would explore the possibility
that
Puritanism and Pietism
might have generated interest in substantively
differing fields of science and in significantly differing styles of scientific
work. The streak of antirationalism
in
Pietism
might
have led to
prime
interest
in
the
largely
descriptive (rather
than
analytical)
kinds of science
advocated
by
Francke
(cf.
Merton
[1936] 1968, p. 643,
n.
62)
and
might
have led to a focus on the tinkering technical interest of
the practical
inventor rather than on work
deriving in some deductive style from sci-
1100
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The Latest Word
entific theory.
In
contrast, the kinds of
science
proving
more
congenial
to the Puritan ethos with
its
inclusion
of an
emphasis
on
rationality might
tend to be, to put it anachronistically, of a more nearly hypothetico-
deductive sort,
in
which
experiment
and observation more
fully
connect
with
an often mathematically expressed sequence
of
deductive reasoning.
However all this may in fact turn out, that study of the
mid-1930s did
not venture to consider this kind of query about
such
possible
conse-
quences
of the
presence
or absence of
rationality
as an element
in
the
religious ethos.
The Pietism-Science Connection as an Unintended Consequence
Along with being a strategic case for assessing
the place of rationalism
in
emerging types of "new science" and serving
further to instance the
perspective that rejects the positivistic view of primarily or wholly con-
flicting relations between religion and science,
the Pietism case held a
third kind of theoretical interest. As was heavily emphasized
in
the mono-
graph in which the pages on Pietism are
embedded, the hypothesized
relation
between
ascetic
Protestantism
and
the emergence
of
modern
sci-
ence
was largely an unintended consequence of
the
religious
ethic and
related patterns of action (religiously derived practice) instead of being
only
the
result of direct and deliberate support
of
science
by religious
leaders (Merton [1938] 1970, pp. 79, 100-102, 136). This evidently
held
particular
interest for the author since
in
the
same
year
as the article
"Puritanism, Pietism and Science" was published, he was also arguing
that the unanticipated consequences of purposive social
action (Merton
1936) constitute a principal pattern of social and cultural change.
As we
shall see before we examine the differing
readings
of the
specific
historical
evidence by Merton and by Becker
in the
Appendix, the critique
fails to
pay adequate
attention to these
(and
the
other)
theoretical
aspects
of the
original study which,
to
my mind, give
it
any
but
the
most
parochial
descriptive interest.
The
result
is
that
the
otherwise well-mounted
evi-
dentiary critique reverts,
rather more than is
indicated,
to some of the
long-standing historical debates over
the
character of
the
varieties of
Pietism and of its historical role. The neglect of theoretical contexts pro-
vides one
component of the fallacy of the latest word
in
scholarly and
scientific
controversy.
THE
FALLACY OF
THE
LATEST WORD
The
fallacy consists
in
the usually tacit belief that the latest word on a
given subject
or
problem
is
necessarily the best word, at least pro tem,
if
indeed it is not the definitive, once-and-for-all
word. Sometimes the
1101
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American Journal of Sociology
fallacy is committed by
the author of the most recent
word,
sometimes
by its readers,
and sometimes
by
both
in
an
unwitting complicity.
If stated
explicitly, it is a position that will not readily claim many adherents. Yet
it has a way of turning up
implicitly in the course of those scholarly
controversies which arise regularly
in
accord with
the
norm and practice
of socially organized skepticism.
At
a
surface
glance,
there
seems to be
some merit
in
the
assumption
that the latest
scientific or
scholarly
word
is apt to be better than what has gone before. For once a theoretically
derived hypothesis and
its supporting evidence
have been
put forward,
each succeeding work on
the hypothesis can
draw
critically
on the pre-
ceding materials and thus presumably improve
on
them
by
rooting
out
previous errors and replacing them with new provisional truths. But, I
suggest,
that
surface plausibility
rests
on a tissue of
deep-seated
and
questionable assumptions.
A
first tacit assumption
holds that although an author developing
a
hypothesis has misperceived, misinterpreted,
or
misreported
the assem-
bled
evidence that invites or supports the hypothesis,
the critic
accurately
perceives, interprets, and reports the
text and the evidence under
review.
That assumption is manifested
in part by the absence of overt signs that
the critic is critical of his criticism,
recognizing that it, too,
is variously
subject to the risk of faults like those attributed to the earlier text.
As a case
in
point, the Becker critique confidently
assumes that
in
"the
investigation of sources" the critic's later readings are patently
more ac-
curate than readings dating from
the mid-1930s. Thus the
critique
an-
nounces that "although Merton's
assertions have some basis in fact, they
invite distortion because of factual inaccuracies, overstatements,
and
omissions
regarding
the
overriding
objectives
of education as envisaged
by
Pietistic
pedagogues" (Becker 1984, p. 1072). Here,
and throughout the
critique, there
is
not
the
least
hint
that
the critic's own
perspectivist
readings and exegeses of the
same texts might possibly be subject to
distortion
owing
to "inaccuracies, overstatements, and omissions." Yet,
as
is
suggested by
the
details gathered
in the
Appendix,
some matters of
fact and
interpretation
in
the history
of
German
education singled out
in
the
critique are
at
least moot,
with authorities by now somewhat worn,
such as Heubaum
([1905] 1973)
and Ziegler (1895), cited by both
Merton
and Becker, agreeing
on some points and being at odds on others instead
of
uniformly supporting
the position set forth
in
the critique.
Since it provides a varied symptomatic instance of the hazard of er-
roneous readings, damaging omissions, and questionable interpretations
in
a critique which is pro tem
the latest word on its subject,
I
shall
center,
in
dogged detail,
on a
single
passage
that
deals with the
sociological
literature on the central hypothesis
rather than with the historical
liter-
ature
on
theology
and
German
pedagogy (which
I
examine
in
the
Ap-
1102
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The Latest Word
pendix). Contrasting
that
passage
in
the
1984
critique
with
a
related
passage
in
the 1930s study also provides
a distinct
side
benefit
by collating
the scattered paragraphs in Weber'swritings which deal with the subject
at
hand.
I
begin by turning
to
Becker's
conclusion,
where he
writes:
That Pietism failed to provide a
powerful impetus
to
science
is not
nec-
essarily inconsistent with
Weber's
observations
on
the relation of
ascetic
Protestantism and science. Indeed,
while Weber
in
the
conclusion
of
The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
Capitalism ([1904-5]
1930, p. 183)
ten-
tatively posited a
link
between
ascetic Protestantism
and
science,
he
was
nevertheless aware that ascetic Protestantism
could
also
have adverse con-
sequences for the
development of
science.
For
example, he wrote
in
General
Economic
History ([1923] 1950, p.
270) that "the ascetic sects
of
Protes-
tantism have also
been disposed to have
nothing to do with science, except
in a situation where material
requirements of everyday
life were involved"
(italics added [by
GB]). This description appears to apply to
German
Pie-
tism. [Becker
1984, p. 1088]
Once
anatomized,
this
passage
in
the
penultimate
paragraph
of
the
critique illustrates
amply why the latest word need not be
the best word.
The passage exhibits some cognitive
costs of the critic's
decision to wear
blinders
by confining
himself to those few
pages devoted
to the
auxiliary
Pietism-sciencehypothesis while wholly
ignoring relevant
contexts. Thus,
we
are told that
the
critique
is
not
necessarily
at odds with
Weber's views
since he "wrote
in
General Economic
History"
a
sentence,
which the critic
partly italicizes
for
emphasis, declaring that ascetic
Protestant sects "have
also been
disposed to have
nothing
to do
with science,"
except
in
a
specified
type
of
situation.
The
critic might have done well to
attend
to
a
cautionary
note about
Wirtschaftsgeschichte (translated by Frank H.
Knight as Gen-
eral
Economic History)9 appearing in both the
article and the
monograph
under review. He
might
then
have hesitated to
say
that
"Weber
wrote"
that sentence. He might instead have gone on to inform readers that this
book of Weber's
must
be
read with
caution, particularly when
it
seems
to
contradict positions Weber repeatedly
expressed
in
books he did write
with
typical
care. For as that
cautionary
note
observed,
. .
. it is
surprising to note the statement
accredited
to
Max
Weber that the
opposition
of
the Reformers is sufficient reason for not
coupling Protes-
tantism
with scientific interests. See
Wirtschaftsgeschichte(Miinchen, 1923,
314).
This
remark is
especially unanticipated since
it
does
not
at all
accord
9
It may be of
interest, and not only to
present-day sociologists
making
critical
sys-
tematic use of quantitative and qualitative citation analysis, that Frank Knight (in
Weber
[1923] 1950) opens
his
translator's
preface by
noting
that
"Max
Weber is
probably
the most outstanding name in
German social
thought since Schmoller, and a recent
survey finds
him
the most
quoted sociologist
in
Germany."
Incidentally, Weber's ci-
tations were being reported by
the then young
Louis Wirth (1926) writing a decade
before his sterling translation,
along
with
Edward Shils, of
Mannheim's Ideology and
Utopia. (See American
Journal of Sociology,
November 1926, p.
464.)
1103
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American
Journal of Sociology
with
Weber's discussion of the same
point
in
his other works.
Cf.
Reli-
gionssoziologie, I, 141, 564;
Wissenschaft als Beruf
(Miunchen, 1921, 19-
20). The
probable explanation is that
the first is not
Weber's statement,
since the
Wirtschaftsgeschichte was
compiled
from
classroom notes
by
two
of
his students who
may
have
neglected
to
make the requisite distinctions.
It is unlikely that Weber
would have
made the elementary error
of
confusing
the Reformers' opposition to certain
scientific discoveries
with
the unfore-
seen
consequences
of
the
Protestant
ethic, particularly
since he
expressly
warns
against the failure to make such
distinctions
in
his
Religionssozio-
logie. [Merton (1936)
1968, p. 634n; cf.
slight extensions in (1938) 1970,
pp.
100-101n]
That early
cautionary note is itself
incomplete. It
might have gone on to
observe that Weber himself had severe misgivings about these lectures
on
economic
history and
that
unlike volume
1
of the Gesammelte
Aufsfitze
zurReligionssoziologie, which he did
write, gather together,
and correct
in
galleys
during the last
year of his life (Marianne
Weber [1926]
1975,
p. 675; Parsons
in
Weber
[1904-5] 1930; Nelson
1974),
he
never
got
to
read and vet
the
Wirtschaftsgeschichte since this text based on
his
last
full
set of lectures at Munich in
that
same
year
was
reconstructed and
published only after
his
death.10
It
would thus
appear that that
lone
sentence from
the General Economic
History
should
carry
rather less
evidentiary weight than Weber's repeated and considered judgments to
the
contrary, from the time of
the first
appearance
of the
essay
on
the
Protestant
ethic in 1904-5
to its final revision in
1919-20 chiefly in
the
form
of
footnotes which,
supplying
new
evidence
and
rebuttals to criti-
cisms, run in
their entirety to about the
same length as the
text itself
(about 50,000 words
each).
And
then, as
though
the
critic were
in
collusion to
help identify the
fallacy of
the
latest word, this
neglect
of
the cognitive status of
Weber's
General Economic
History
is
coupled
with
other
neglects. Nary a word
is provided following up the references to Weberin the same ([1936]1968)
passage
and further
quotations from Weber
n
which he
states
his
tentative
conclusions
about
the
connections between
early
modern science
and
ascetic
Protestantism
generally
and Pietism
specifically.
To be
sure,
Weber
1o
As the German compilers and editors-the historian Professor S. Hellmann and the
economist Dr. M. Palyi-observed in their preface, "Even if Weber had lived
longer
he would not have given his Economic History to the public, at least not
in
the form
in which we have it here. Utterances of his prove that he regarded the work as an
improvisation with a thousand defects. .
. .
The situation just pictured set the task
of the editors and made it a difficult one. No manuscript or even coherent outlines by
Weber himself were available. There were
found
in
his
papers only
a bundle of
sheets
with notes little more than catchwords set down
in a
handwriting hardly legible even
to those accustomed to it. Consequently, the text had
to
be restored from notes by
students,
who
willingly made
their notebooks available
for
several
months"
(Weber
1923, p. xvii). As we see, it was misleading for Merton to suggest that the editors
reconstructed the text from the notes of only two students.
1104
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The Latest
Word
did not examine
the
hypothesis
in
detail,
concluding
his
classic
essay
programmatically by
describing one
of the "nexttasks" as
that of searching
out the "significance of ascetic rationalism, which has only been touched
in the
foregoing sketch,"
for a variety of cultural
and social
developments,
among them "the
development of philosophical and
scientific
empiricism
. . . technical
development and . .
.
spiritual
ideals"
(Weber [1904-5]
1930, pp.
182-83). This
programmatic statement is at
least cited
in
the
critique. But again, nary a
word about the
abundant citations
and quoted
indications in
the 1930s
monograph of how all
this
looked to Weber,
especially after his
comparative
sociological studies
of
religion.
One
of the
ignored
references
in
Merton's
cautionary
passage
on the
GeneralEconomic History leads directly to this strong formulation: "Re-
ligion . . .
frequently
considers purely empirical
research, including that
of
natural
science,
as
more reconcilable to
religious interests than it
does
philosophy. This is the
case above
all in ascetic
Protestantism"
(Weber
[1920] 1978,
1:564, as translated by
Gerth and Mills
in
Weber
[1919]
1946,
p. 350).
Furthermore,
the
critique
has
nothing
to
say
about Merton's
observation that
scientists
oriented toward
ascetic
Protestantism saw the
study
of nature as
enabling
a
fuller
appreciation
of His
power
and cre-
ation. By an
extension of this
religiously
based definition
of their
role,
"nothingin Nature is too mean for scientific study."Merton observes that
"Max
Weber remarks this
same attitude
in
Swammerdam,
whom
he
quotes
as saying 'Here I
bring you
the proof
of
God's
providence
in
the
anatomy
of
a
louse'
"
(Merton [1938]
1970,
104n, citing Wissenschaft als
Beruf [Weber1919], p. 19). Here the
1930s
author of
Science, Technology
and
Society, then
writing
the
latest word on the
subject, actually scanted
Weber's
position.
Had
he foreseen the
1984
Becker
critique,
he
might
have continued
with the
quotation from Weber
who then went on
to say
apropos
Pietism
and science that
"you
will see
[in
Swammerdam's state-
ment]
what
the scientific
worker,
influenced
(indirectly) by
Protestantism
and
Puritanism,
conceived
to
be his task: to show
the
path
to
God.
People
no
longer
found this
path among
the
philosophers,
with
their
concepts
and
deductions.
All
pietist
theology
of
the
time,
above
all
Spener,
knew
that
God was not to be
found
along
the road
by
which the
Middle
Ages
had
sought him.
God
is
hidden,
His
ways
are not our
ways,
His
thoughts
are
not
our
thoughts.
In
the exact
sciences,
however,
where one could
physically
grasp
His
works, one
hoped
to
come
upon
the
traces of what
He planned for the world" (Weber[1919] 1946, p. 142).
These, then,
exemplify some of the
pertinent materials
wholly ignored
in
the
critique,
presumably
as
a
result of the
decision
to confine
attention
to
those
few
pages focused
on
Pietism
in
the
1936 article
(and
thus
to
ignore also
the
somewhat fuller
documentation found
in
the 1938 mono-
graph).
That
decision
entailed
a
thorough neglect
of the
theoretical con-
1105
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American Journal of Sociology
texts provided elsewhere in the article and monograph which, as I have
noted, qualify and specify the generic hypothesis of the connections be-
tween ascetic Protestantism and science by identifying the basic mecha-
nisms, such as unintended consequences, rather than only direct doctrinal
support
that
operated to provide those connections. Even so, had the
critic read even the comparable handful of pages in the monograph, he
might have had second thoughts about the position he imputes to Weber.
For he would have found there Weber's virtually last observation on the
matter-this, in the first volume of the Religionssoziologie ([1920] 1978,
p. 533),
which he had
prepared for publication shortly before
his
death-
to the effect, stated almost
in
the vein of the Pietist leader, Francke, that
useful knowledge, exemplified above all by the orientations of empirical
natural science and geography which provide a down-to-earth clarity of
realistic thought and specialized knowledge, was
first
systematically
cul-
tivated
as the
purpose of education
in
Puritan circles and
in
Germany
especially
in
Pietistic circles (as quoted
in
Merton [1938] 1970, p. 124, n.
50).
On
this,
as
is
so
often
the
case
with related
matters,
Troeltsch
([1912]
1931, 2:958) is at one with Weber, writing
in
rather strong language,
"
'. . .
the ideals of
Pietism
with
regard
to education
are
exactly
the same
as
those
of
Puritanism.'
"
Finally, there is evidence that both author and critic are subject to the
hazard of overlooking highly apposite materials. Merton ([1938] 1970, p.
59) quotes only a smidgen
of
what
is
perhaps
Weber's
strongest and
most
instructive passage on the complex relation between Pietism
and
science,
while Becker
(1984) says nothing at
all about
it.
The Weber observations
call
for
full
quotation
in accord with the
policy plainly being adopted
here of quoting key passages at some length in order to avoid the second-
order hazards of excessively brief paraphrases,which
can
easily contribute
to
the misinterpretations and misunderstandings that keep
the
latest crit-
ical
word from being necessarily the best word on a subject, hypothesis,
or
conjecture.
In
one of those
long footnotes,
Weber once
again
disowns
any intention
of
conducting
a
detailed investigation
but
nevertheless
man-
ages
to
say
much
in
little:
The decided propensity
of
Protestant asceticism
for
empiricism,
rationalized
on
a
mathematical
basis,
is
well
known,
but cannot be further
analyzed
here....
For the attitude of Protestant asceticism
the
decisive
point
was,
as
may perhaps
be most
clearly
seen
in
[the Pietist] Spener's Theologische
Bedenken I, p. 232; III, p. 260, that just as the Christian is known by the
fruits
of his
belief,
the
knowledge
of
God and
His
designs
can
only
be
attained
through
a
knowledge
of
His
works.
The
favourite
science
of
all
Puritan, Baptist,
or
Pietist
Christianity
was thus
physics,
and next
to
it
all those other natural sciences
which used
a
similar
method, especially
mathematics.
It
was
hopedfrom
the
empirical knowledge of
the
divine laws
of
nature
to ascend to a
grasp of
the
essence
of
the
world,
which
on
account
1106
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The
Latest Word
of the
fragmentary nature
of
the divine revelation, a Calvinistic
idea,
could
never be attained by the
method of metaphysical speculation. The empir-
icism
of the seventeenth century was the means for asceticism to see God
in
nature. It seemed to lead to God, philosophical
speculation away from
Him.
In
particular Spener considers the Aristotelean
philosophy to have
been the most harmful
element
in
Christian tradition.
. .
. The
significance
of
this attitude
of
ascetic
Protestantism
for
the development
of
education,
especially technical education, is well known." Combined with
the attitude
tofides
implicita they furnished
a pedagogical programme. [Weber (1920),
1:141-42, as translated by
Talcott Parsons
in
Weber ([1904-5] 1930), p.
249, n.
145;
italics
added]
Once
the
fallacy
of the latest
word
is
explicitly recognized
as a
distinct
hazard, even in critical accounts of the most civil variety (such as the
Becker
critique), that recognition can serve as a prophylaxis
against a
second
assumption underlying the fallacy. That is the
assumption of an
inexorable, unilinear progress in knowledge, despite minor
and temporary
fluctuations in it.
Such
an
assumption
of
steady cognitive
progress
holds
that
each
succeeding
work
improves
on what has
gone before, since
it
profits from that prior knowledge
base. This is one of
those half-truths
which,
especially
when it remains
tacit,
leads
to
the naive belief in a
steady unilinear rather than
in
a
variously
selective and uneven cumu-
lation of scientific knowledge. This conception of progress is of a kind
that was
being emphatically
rejected
in the
very sociological circles
in
which the mid-1930s hypotheses on
ascetic
Protestantism
and
science
were
being
developed
in
detail.
Perhaps the most
emphatic
sociological
voice of the time
energetically
repudiating the naive versions of
unilinear progress
in
knowledge
was
Pitirim
Sorokin's, most particularly in the massive four volumes of his
Social and Cultural
Dynamics
(1937). Assisting
Sorokin
in
exploring
the
rival
hypotheses of fluctuations
and oscillations
in the
historical devel-
opment of science, the author of "Puritanism, Pietism and Science" traced
the
cyclical
vicissitudes
of such
scientific ideas as vitalism,
mechanism,
and
abiogenesis
in
biology; wave and corpuscular theories
of
light
in
physics;
and cosmogonic theories
(Sorokin
and Merton
1937, chap. 12).
Of most
immediate interest
is the
observation
appearing
in
the
original
protocol by the junior author
stating with regard
to the
fluctuation
of
atomic
doctrines that
various
theories "rose and
gathered
a
power
im-
"
The phrase "is well known,"
here and in
the first sentence of Weber's long footnote,
tantalizes rather than informs. The allusion may be to the writings of Troeltsch, but
it hints at a rather wider scholarly consensus on the posited
connections
between
ascetic Protestantism and science. Perhaps this impression that
those connections were
well established and well understood
lay behind Weber's recurrent disclaimer in his
sociology of religion; e.g., "We
cannot
speak
here of the
significance
[of
Puritanism]
for the
development
of
technology
and natural science"
(as quoted
by
Merton
1(1938)
1970], p. 59, n. 9).
1107
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American Journal of Sociology
pressive enough to
be
accepted as the
'last word
of
science' by the leading
scientists
or
thinkers
of the
period.
At other
periods they declined and
sometimes practically disappeared" (p. 445).
Still, though
awareness of the
fallacy
of the latest
word
can
guard
against
a
naive
assumption
of
steady
progress
in which all
that follows
improves on what precedes,
it
need not
lead
us to the
opposite
error
of
denying
the selective and uneven
accumulation of
various kinds of sci-
entific knowledge over the centuries.
To
discard
the
Comtean and
later
Edwardian faith
in
unyielding intellectual
progress
in
science and
tech-
nology does
not
require
us to
deny
the
patent
advancement of such knowl-
edge, despite
all its
intervening errors, garden
paths,
and
misconceptions.
To put it concretely, the beautiful Greek mythology could summon up no
more scientific and technological imagination than to endow the doomed
Icarus with wings of feathers and wax. And
though
we
may
not like
the
noisy Concorde,
we must concede that it derives from
a
somewhat better
knowledge of aerodynamics than that.U Still,
all
this represents only the
result of selective accumulation
of
knowledge,
a
conception
that allows
for
error, misinterpretations, and
misattributions
in
particular
cases. This
is consequently remote
from
the fallacy of
assuming
that
the latest
word
need be
the
best and most reliable word.
A third often tacit but
sometimes explicit
premise making
for the
fallacy
of
the latest word holds that
a
hypothesis
or
underlying theory
is
obviously
to be
abandoned as
soon as
it appears to have
been
empirically
falsified.
At the
extreme,
this
premise
maintains that a
single counterexample jus-
tifies
rejection
of
a
hypothesis.
Were this
so
in actual
practice,
as
distinct
from certain
epistemological doctrines,
the
mortality
rate of
scientific
ideas, high as it is, would rise
dramatically.
But
the
critical
pragmatism
which
commonly
obtains in actual scientific
practice
seldom
operates
in
such strong terms of easy falsification. Decades after the beginnings of
Karl
Popper's ([1934] 1959; 1963; 1972) powerful and evolving doctrine
of
falsification,
the fundamental
question
still
endures:
When are
we
to
retain a hypothesis or theoretical conception in the face of facts that seem
to
refute
it?
In
short,
when are we to trust the
governing idea; when,
the
contravening
"fact"?
Or,
as
applied
to
the case
in
point,
does the Becker
critique require
us to
reject
or
severely modify
the
hypothesis
of the
Pietism-science connection as
tentatively derived
from
the generic hy-
pothesis
of
the ascetic Protestantism
hypothesis?
This appearsto be an instance in which both the generic andthe specific
12
For the welter of recent doctrines
on scientific
progress, see, among much else,
Lakatos (1978); Kuhn (1977), esp.
chap. 11; Laudan
(1977); Elkana (1981), pp. 53-
54. None of these
deny the palpable
facts of progress in science
but
they variously
construe its
character, forms, and mechanisms.
For
myself,
the
processes
of selective
accumulation of scientific
knowledge provide no basis
for the kind of inexorable pro-
gressivism implicit in the fallacy
of the latest word.
1108
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The Latest Word
hypotheses continue to remain on probation in the
sense
that all such
interpretations must be
considered provisional.
This
is
so in
the light of
what the differentiated methodological doctrine of Lakatos (1978, 1:8-
138)
describes as "sophisticated"ratherthan "naive
falsification" and
also
because
the questioned evidence in
this
case is
largely
either
peripheral
to the
hypothesis or, more important, is still on trial
among specialists.
Limitations of space preclude an
attempt to reconstructLakatos's complex
and detailed argument here (the omission