The Sociological Roots of Science

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2201348
AutoresEdgar Zilsel (autor correspondente)
Ano2000
Volume30
Fascículo6
Páginas935-949
Data de publicação2000-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSocial Studies of Science (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0306-3127 • E-ISSN: 1460-3659
EditoraSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/030631200030006006
OpenAlexW2008665173
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas77

In the period from 1300 to 1600 three strata of intellectual activity must be distinguished: university scholars, humanists, and artisans. Both university scholars and humanists were rationally trained. Their methods, however, were determined by their professional conditions and differed substantially from the methods of science. Both professors and humanistic literati distinguished liberal from mechanical arts and despised manual labor, experimentation, and dissection. Craftsmen were the pioneers of causal thinking in this period. Certain groups of superior manual labores (artistengineers, surgeons, the makers of nautical and musical instruments, surveyors, navigators, gunners) experimented, dissected, and used quantitative methods. The measuring instruments of the navigators, surveyors, and gunners were the forerunners of the later physical instruments. The craftsmen, however, lacked methodical intellectual training. Thus the two components of the scientific method were separated by a social barrier: logical training was reserved for upper-class scholars; experimentation, causal interest, and quantitative method were left to more or less plebeian artisans. Science was born when, with the progress of technology, the experimental method eventually overcame the social prejudice against manual labor and was adopted by rationally trained scholars. This was accomplished about 1600 (Gilbert, Galileo, Bacon). At the same time the scholastic method of disputation and the humanistic ideal of individual glory were superseded by the ideals of control of nature and advancement of learning through scientific co-operation. In a somewhat different way, sociologically, modern astronomy developed. The whole process was imbedded in the advance of early capitalistic society, which weakened collective-mindedness, magical thinking, and belief in authority and which furthered worldly, causal, rational, and quantitative thinking

Aesthetics · Epistemology · Glory · Humanism · Period (music · Political science · Scientific method · Sociology · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice · Historical and Literary Studies · Historical Philosophy and Science · Law · Philosophy · Psychology