The Competitiveness of Nations in a Global Knowledge-Based Economy
Robert K. Merton
The Fallacy of the Latest Word:
The
Case of “Pietism and Science”
American Journal of Sociology,,
89 (5)
March 1984,
1091-1121.
Content
Theoretical Contexts and Empirical Knowledge
Claims
Levels of Theoretical Abstraction in Sociohistorical
Inquiry
A Counterintuitive and Counterpositivistic
Hypothesis
The Role of Rationality in Emerging Modern Science: Pietism as a Strategic Polar
Case
The Pietism-Science Connection as an Unintended
Consequence
The Fallacy of the Latest Word
Appendix of Sociohistorical
Particulars
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 essentials 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,
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 do yen of historians of science,
George Sarton. The citation in my
text expressly includes the 1935 dissertation, “Sociological Aspects of
Scientific Development in Seventeenth-Century England,” 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.
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 proposes similar connections
between Pietism and science. The
Becker critique 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
arrangements for 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 history of 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 Protestantism in the emergence of modern capitalism ({1904-5] 1930) even
though they have been periodically subjected to much and allegedly conclusive
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 conjunction 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
3. The
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separately. Since these criticisms largely involve
conflicting interpretations of German Pietist history, dogma, and practice that
have long been debated 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 Sociohistorical 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 organized 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 institution 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 obtained substantial legitimacy as an unintended
consequence of the religious 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 German 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 affiliations 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
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 theoretical
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 heuristically fruitful. This, I suggest, is the case with the
hypothesized linkages among Puritanism, Pietism, and science. Yet, having cited Science, Technology
and Society in Seventeenth Century England in its very first sentence, 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’s post-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 principle,
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 trustworthiness, rather than total freedom from error, underlies the
system of organized skepticism 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.
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 [nb.] motivate and canalize
the activities of men [5] 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 sociohistorical 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,
without 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 historical
sociology. In such analysis, a
particular concrete historical development 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 Pietism] is not being put forward as a
prerequisite to the substantial thrust of English [or German] science in that
time; other functionally 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 culturally
patterned support for a not yet institutionalized science; it does not
presuppose that only Puritanism [or Pietism] could have served that function.
[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 indispensable only affords
a splendid specimen of the fallacy of misplaced abstraction (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]
5. The 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.”
In the light of this emphatically formulated hypothesis
that ascetic Protestantism, including Pietism, served to legitimate a 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
observation, 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 connection. 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 religious 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 become 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 pattern, too, has been noted concerning the great Reformers:
Luther, Melanchthon, 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 - despite such immediate opposition to seemingly
dangerous thoughts in science, 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 sanctification can ultimately
lead to secularization is precisely the sociohistorical 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
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 “idealistic” 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
“materialistic” 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
contribution to the legitimatizing of science of both the value orientation
supplied by Puritanism [and Pietism] and the pervasive belief in, perhaps more
than the occasional fact 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
interdependent 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, eventually making for anticipatory and subsequent concern with the
interconnections 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 “psychology 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
This condensed sketch of the successively abstract
theoretical contexts of the sociohistorical hypothesis requires some theoretical
and methodological 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 hypothesis 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
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 Protestantism,
the two had much in common. Indeed,
the 17th- and 18th-
7. Since 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
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 actions (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 challenge various forms of
authority, (5) a strong streak of antitraditionalism, all these coupled
with the exaltation of both (6) empiricism and (7) rationality. 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 “enthusiasm 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 significance
of rationality for an emerging interest in science within the English tradition,
so, too, it was assumed, would “enthusiastic” Pietism as a weaker counterpart in
In drawing on Weber’s observations on this emotional
element in Pietism, 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, dominated 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
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 discussion). This it did in the following excessively
condensed, imperfectly expressed, formally unexplicated, and therefore rather
enigmatic formulation 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 science 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 accumulation 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
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 consequences 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 conflicting relations between religion and science, the Pietism case held
a third kind of theoretical interest. As was heavily emphasized in the
monograph in which the pages on Pietism are embedded, the hypothesized relation
between ascetic Protestantism and the emergence of modern science 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 evidentiary 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
provides 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
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 preceding 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
assembled 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 accurate than readings dating from the mid-1930s. Thus the critique announces 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 erroneous 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 literature on theology and German pedagogy (which I examine in the
Ap-
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’s writings 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 necessarily 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)
tentatively posited a link between ascetic Protestantism and science, he was
nevertheless aware that ascetic Protestantism could also have adverse
consequences for the development of science. For example, he wrote in General
Economic History ([1923] 1950, p. 270) that “the ascetic sects of
Protestantism 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 Pietism. [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-science hypothesis
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 General 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 Protestantism with scientific interests. See Wirtschaftsgeschichte
(München, 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 systematic 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 citations 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
with Weber’s discussion of the same point in his other
works. Cf. Religionssoziologie, I, 141, 564; Wissenschaft als Beruf
(Munchen, 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 unforeseen consequences of the Protestant ethic,
particularly since he expressly warns against the failure to make such
distinctions in his Religionssoziologie. [Merton (1936) 1968, p. 634n;
cf. slight extensions in (1938) 1970, pp. 100 10n]
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 Aufsatze zur Religionssoziologie,
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
criticisms, 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 Weber in the same ([1936] 1968)
passage and further quotations from Weber in which he states his tentative
conclusions about the connections between early modern science and ascetic
Protestantism generally and Pietism specifically. To be sure, Weber
10. 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
did not examine the hypothesis in detail, concluding his
classic essay programmatically by describing one of the “next tasks” 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 General Economic History leads directly to this strong
formulation: “Religion.... 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 creation. By an extension
of this religiously based definition of their role, “nothing in 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
[Weber 1919], 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 statement] 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
monograph). That decision entailed
a thorough neglect of the theoretical con-
texts provided elsewhere in the article and monograph
which, as I have noted, qualify and specify the generic hypothesis of the
connections between ascetic Protestantism and science by identifying the basic
mechanisms, 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 cultivated 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
critical 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 manages 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 hoped from the empirical
knowledge of the divine laws of nature to ascend to a grasp of the essence of
the world, which on account
1106
of the fragmentary nature of the divine revelation, a
Calvinistic idea, could never be attained by the method of metaphysical
speculation. The empiricism 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. [11] Combined with the attitude to fides 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 cumulation 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 development 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-
11. 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 [(1938) 1970], p. 59, n.
9).
1107
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 scientific
knowledge over the centuries. To
discard the Comtean and later Edwardian faith in unyielding intellectual
progress in science and technology does not require us to deny the patent
advancement of such knowledge, 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. [12] 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 justifies 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
hypothesis of the ascetic Protestantism hypothesis?
This appears to be an instance in which both the generic
and the 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
progressivism implicit in the fallacy of 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” rather than “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 reconstruct Lakatos’s complex and detailed argument here (the omission may
lure some readers to his original work); essentially, he argues that, in naive
falsification, a theory is acceptable or “scientific” if it is experimentally
falsifiable, whereas for sophisticated falsification it is acceptable “only if
it has corroborated excess empirical content over its predecessor (or rival),
that is, only if it leads to the discovery of novel facts” (Lakatos 1978,
1:31-32). Or in emphatic,
italicized conclusion, “Contrary to naive falsificationism, no experiment,
experimental report, observation statement or well-corroborated low-level
falsifying hypothesis alone can lead to falsification. There is no falsification before the
emergence of a better theory” (
Since that argument (which is not alien to Popper’s
later judgments) is claimed to hold for the most rigorous and exacting
experimental inquiry, we can take it to hold all the more (a fortiori) for such
scientific and scholarly inquiries as sociohistorical studies, in which strong
and relatively precise empirical falsifications of theoretical interpretations,
as well as precisely accumulated confirmations, are comparatively rare. To acknowledge this is not to engage in
disciplinary self-deprecation nor is it to adopt an unthinking, stereotyped
imagery of the “exact sciences.” It
is simply an attempt to place the logic of falsifiability within the ongoing
practical contexts of actual inquiry in diverse disciplines. For it reminds us that even seemingly
exacting experiments in physics, biology, or physiological psychology that
apparently refute a hypothesis derived from a larger body of theory need not
lead promptly to abandoning the underlying theory and the derived hypothesis,
and this for the most pragmatic of reasons. The reportedly refuting experiment,
either in critically reappraised design or in actual execution, may simply fail
to meet the full requirements of the hypothesis subjected to experimental test.
[13]
Unwitting
misinterpret-
13. The same logic holds, I suggest, for truly
minor ideas, such as the ones under review, as for scientific ideas of
world-shaking grandeur without this at all implying a naive, emulous positivism.
Consider this comment on a remark
from Einstein by the meticulous student of his epistemology and practice, Gerald
Holton: “ ‘Human beings are normally deaf to the strongest [favorable] arguments
while they are always inclined to overestimate measuring accuracies.’ He was warning on such occasions that one
should be reasonably skeptical about experiments that disconfirm as about those
that confirm - and particularly if the alleged experimental disconfirmation of
one theory is used to support another which, on other grounds, is less
appealing” (Holton [1979], p. 324; cf. Holton 1973] for much documentary
elaboration of this theme).
1109
tations of the original hypothesis with its contextual
qualifications, and slippage in the transition from the original hypotheses,
concepts, indicators, and observations, are all the more likely to occur in
sociohistorical inquiry where systematic evidence closely corresponding to the
basic theoretical variables is, if only for practical reasons, often exceedingly
difficult to achieve.
The Becker critique provides ample evidence that
proposed refutations are subject to the hazard of the ideas under review not
being adequately caught up in their reformulation. Thus, the critique strongly and
reiteratively questions three dubious positions ascribed to the Pietism-science
hypothesis. First, that it “fails
to take into account the full spectrum of pertinent Pietistic beliefs and
values” and especially the “conflicting dispositions within Pietism toward
science” (Becker 1984, pp. 1066, 1069; see also pp. 1071 and 1087). Second, that the hypothesis holds, at
least by implication, that Pietism provided the chief or exclusive impetus to
emerging German science, whereas “the Pietists’ support for science was
considerably less intense than Merton claims. Moreover, other elements in German
society, particularly the nobility and those associated with 18th-century
rationalism and the spirit of the Enlightenment, fostered scientific education
actively and more enthusiastically” (Becker 1984, p. 1074). And third, almost as a corollary, that
the hypothesis maintains that Pietism provided “unflagging support” for science
(evidently a special defect since such imputed “unflagging support” is claimed
in the second paragraph of the critique, in the last paragraph, and in
between).
On their face, these criticisms seem well founded - on
one condition. That arbitrary
condition is that we, like the critic, ignore relevant contexts and confine
ourselves to those three pages on Pietism and the subsequent handful of pages on
the religious composition of the student body in 19th-century schools variously
oriented to science. Were I now
advising the author of the original monograph, I should urge him to extend and
deepen that exceedingly short excursion into the Pietist sphere to reiterate the
earlier qualifications about Puritanism explicitly here as well. Or, failing such an elaboration, I should
press him at the least to alert readers to the places in the 1938 monograph and
later writings which, as we have seen in the long passages quoted in the first
part of this paper, emphatically run counter to these general imputations in the
critique. However, the author
strikes me as being quite as much at fault in having neglected to link those
generic qualifications expressly to the abbreviated case of Pietism as the
critique is at fault in having neglected those readily accessible contexts to
center solely on those pages on Pietism. In doing so, the critique provides yet
another instance of the Kenneth Burke (1935, p. 70) theorem on selective
perception: “A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing - a focus upon object A
involves a neglect of object B.”
1110
Had the imputation that the author assumes full
homogeneity and consistency of Pietist doctrine, for example, been examined
within the wider context of ascetic Protestantism generally, the critique would
have identified reminders in the monograph of “theological diversity” among the
various sects (which, to be sure, are said, as noted by Weber, Troeltsch, and
the historian G. N. Clark, to have often converged toward common values and
practice). Indeed, in an effort to
emphasize that diversity, the monograph even managed a composite gaffe and
typographical error (noted by neither author nor critic) asserting that the
choleric Presbyterian pamphleteer, Thomas Edwards (1646), had “enumerated 180
sects” - a transparent slip for some 180 alleged “heresies” which he had spotted
along with a mere 17 “sectaries.” So, too, the critic would have come on
the generic discussion of ascetic Protestantism as a religious ethic rather than
as theological doctrine, that ethic being “psychologically rather than logically
coherent, [and leading] to a long chain of consequences not least of which was
the destruction of this very system itself” (Merton [1938] 1970, pp. 56-57, 99). Throughout the study, theologians’
doctrines and explicit intentions are distinguished from the religious ethic and
its cumulative unanticipated consequences. [14]
The extended passages quoted from the 1938 monograph
speak directly to the other general imputation, deprived of context, in the
Becker critique: that the religious impetus has been taken to be the dominant,
“unflagging,” and perhaps even exclusive social and cultural source of emerging
interest in science. Those quoted
passages do not bear repetition but are there to be consulted at will. Here, with regard to the fallacy of the
latest word, it need only be added, in the Lakatosian vein, that a generic
critique, as distinct from certain specifics, that provides no alternative,
theoretically grounded hypothesis covering the same ground (and preferably more)
as the hypothesis being rejected is evidently still some distance from a
compelling refutation.
14. The fundamental premise that divergent culturally
patterned motives can converge toward similar practical action also underlies
the monograph by Nicholas Hans (1951) on trends in 18th-century education which
is cited in the Becker critique and is discussed by Merton (1968) as a
“remarkable study” bearing on the subject at hand: Hans “notes, as we have seen
to be the case, that religious ‘motives’ were not alone in making for the
emergence of modern education (and specifically, of scientific education) in
this period; with religion were joined ‘intellectual’ and ‘utilitarian’ motives.
Thus, while ‘the Puritans promoted
science as an additional support of Christian faith based on revelation, the
deists looked upon science as the foundation of any belief in God.’ The three types of motivation tended to
reinforce one another: ‘The Dissenters, as well as many Puritans within the
Church, represented the religious motive for educational reform. The idea of propagatio fidei per
scientia found many adherents among the Dissenters. The intellectual and utilitarian reasons
were put into full motion by secular bodies and teachers before the Dissenting
Academies accepted them wholeheartedly’ (Hans [1951], pp. 12, 54, as quoted in
Merton [1968], pp. 653-54).
1111
From all indications exemplified by the serious and
civil Becker critique, the fallacy of the latest word is a hazard, not a
necessity. The fallacy thrives on
its premises remaining tacit. For
once put into so many words, such premises as steady unfailing progress in the
growth of knowledge and immunity of critics from misperceptions, patterned
misunderstandings, slippage in paraphrases and formulations, [15] and a wholesale neglect of
theoretical contexts soon fall of their own weight. Left implicit, however, such premises do
invite the unexamined assumption that the latest word is the best word on the
subject or problem at hand.
All this does not in the least imply, of course, the
opposite and equal fallacy that the latest word is necessarily mistaken or
retrogressive. What it does suggest
is that in the ongoing social process of organized skepticism, institutionally
and self-designated peers engage in the critical sifting and sorting of
knowledge claims, and that those appraisals are in turn subject to critical
assessment. Analysis of the fallacy
of the latest word suggests reasons for the refutation of a general idea being
in its several ways no less subject to comparable sorts of practical criticism
than is its confirmation.
Finally, it will not have escaped notice that, at least
for the moment, this paper is the latest word on its subject. I suspect that it will not be the last
word. Caveat lector.
APPENDIX OF SOCIOHISTORICAL
PARTICULARS
In collaboration with Alfred
Nordmann
The foregoing pages have tried to identify the cognitive
costs exacted of the Becker critique for systematically neglecting the
analytical and theoretical contexts of that part of the mid-1930s study which
focused on Pietism. The chief cost,
it is argued, is a misconception of the generic hypothesis associating ascetic
Protestantism and early modern science and of the special hypothesis of Pietism
as a case in point.
This Appendix goes on to examine the possible sources
and meanings of the specific charges in the critique that impute documentary
misreadings, omissions of pertinent evidence, and other egregious sins of
inquiry to the study. Rather than
undertake a point-by-point discussion of every detail at the expense of losing
sight of the principal sociohistorical themes,
15. As I have noted, patterned and not merely random
misunderstandings in critics’ and countercritcs’ “translations” of texts under
examination constitute a hazard which, not suitably recognized, invites the
fallacy of the latest word. It is a
coincidence that while this paper was in press, a doubly apt article which
identifies an array of such questionable interpretations of the monograph
undergoing renewed scrutiny has appeared in the journal of the history of
science, Isis, under the title “Misunderstanding the Merton Thesis: A
Boundary Dispute between History and Sociology” (Abraham
1983).
1112
we consider clusters of particulars in the Becker bill
of indictment that bear on those themes. We shall see that reexamination of
sources utilized by both author and critic takes us to countercriticisms of the
critic’s interpretations of texts and of other evidence along lines grown amply
familiar in scholarly controversies. Nevertheless, the give-and-take in this
review of particulars just might clarify the nature and sources of such
patterned misunderstandings more generally and not only in the immediate case.
Author, critic, and countercritic
must recognize, of course, that such reviews of particulars run the risk of
having the excitements of contending scholarship decline quickly into the tedium
of pedantry.
By way of context, we note that Merton in the 1930s and
Becker in the 1980s are looking at the historical role of Pietism largely
through the eyes of scholars who, in the post-Darwin period, were adopting the
received doctrine of inherent conflict between Science and Theology (both
typically capitalized to designate warring systems of truth). These scholars - Heubaum, Kramer, Palmer,
Paulsen, Wiese, and Ziegler - were all writing toward the close of the 19th
century and at the beginning of the 20th. The diverse readings of these scholars by
Merton and Becker can be traced in part to strange equivocations and unresolved
inconsistencies in the pages of some of these trusted sources. The cases in which those scholarly
sources agree do seem to conform rather more to the Merton than to the Becker
interpretation. In other instances,
some post-1930s writings on Pietism are drawn on by both critic and
countercritic to help straighten out the record of historical detail, but, as we
might expect, many questions remain open and call for further
inquiry.
A major cluster of particulars concerns the historical
place of Pietism in the development of German education. We begin by agreeing that the mid-1930s
study overstated its case in announcing that “the ökonomisch-mathematische
Realschule was completely a Pietist product” (Merton [1936] 1968, p. 645). Historical developments do not
ordinarily derive solely from a single source. Were that sentence being written today, a
more restrained “substantially” or “significantly” would replace the unreserved
“completely.” [16
Beyond this matter of easily remedied emphasis, however,
the critique argues that the study simply mistakes the historical connections
between Pietism and the Realschule, the secondary schools oriented toward
technical skills and scientific knowledge. Becker writes, “More serious, however, is
Merton’s faulty assertion that the Pietist Hecker was the
founder
16. One might be altogether literal and reaffirm that the
“ökonomisch-mathematische Realschule” as distinct from the
“mathematische und mechanische Realschule” was indeed a wholly Pietist
product. But such literalism would
only produce an unseemly quibble of a kind analyzed and mildly burlesqued in the
Shandean book, On the Shoulders of Giants (Merton
1965).
of the first Realschule. While Hecker did indeed organize such
an institution in 1747, the first Realschule was founded by Christoph
Semler in 1708 under the name of the Mat hematische und Mechanische
Realschule” (Becker 1984, p. 1074). An out-and-out error, it seems, as Becker
cites a variety of sources in support of his objection. Why, then, this clash of claims regarding
presumably accessible historical fact adduced with excessive brevity in the
original study and with selective attention and inattention in its
critique?
This appears to be an instance of that familiar class of
behavior in scholarly controversies which has one scholar ascribing blatant
errors to another as a result of paraphrases or summaries that omit essentials
in the original statement. Thus,
this is what was actually stated in the 1930s paper: “Moreover, it was a Pietist
and a former student of Francke, Johann Julius Hecker, who first actually
organized a Realschule” (Merton [1936] 1968, p. 645; italics added). The Becker paraphrase wholly ignores the
phrase italicized here, which was a condensed and (to judge from the critic’s
neglect of it) evidently obscure effort to distinguish what was long and well
known to be Semler’s earlier but transitory type of Realschule from
Hecker’s later but enduring and consequential Realschule. The distinction can be fortified by
reverting to a book,
often cited by both author and critic, by the meticulous historian of German
education, Friedrich Paulsen:
As early as at the beginning of the eighteenth century
Archbishop Semler of Halle had made an attempt at setting up such a
school or rather courses for the further instruction of adults in
mathematics, mechanics, natural knowledge, and handicrafts, which did not
meet, however, with any lasting success. It was again a former student of
Later words need not negate earlier words. So it is that in his much later
monograph, Helmreich (1959, p.
28) says next to nothing about Semler’s short-lived effort but does
describe the “disciple of Francke,” Hecker, as “the dominant influence in the
many educational reforms of the mid-eighteenth century,” among them, the
Realschule, “destined for great expansion and development in the next
century.” These conclusions have
their Whiggish tinge but that is not a matter for discussion
here.
The point is not that this or that condensed statement
in the 1930s study fails to be quite the “serious... faulty assertion” the
critique makes it out to be. The
point is, rather, that the continuing focus in the critique on ambiguous
shadings of detail and the impression conveyed in that latest word that
historians uniformly argue to the contrary combine to obscure the overriding
conclusion that there did obtain a historically
1114
significant connection between Pietism and the
science-and-technique-oriented Realschule.
This observation leads us to further particulars. As was noted in the original study but
ignored in the critique, Theobald Ziegler, another historian-specialist of his
time much cited by both author and critic, describes “an inner connection
(inneren Zusammenhang)” between the practically oriented piety of the
Pietists and the orientations distinctive of the Realschule (Ziegler
1895, p. 197). A closer look at the sources cited by
Becker that apparently speak to the contrary - and to those sources we may add
Palmer (1885) as well as Paulsen (1908) and Helmreich (1959) - shows a
difference of interpretation about the roles of Semler and Hecker in instituting
the Realschule that divides pretty much along invisible party lines.
It turns out to be a division
between Heubaum and Kramer and Wiese, who play down or deny the Pietist
connection, and Palmer, Ziegler, and Paulsen, who emphasize
it.
But now to particulars: Kramer and Wiese (1885, pp. 710,
712) contradict themselves in the space of two pages by first claiming that
Semler and Hecker did not agree about the main thrust of instruction in their
schools and then announcing that the two not only chose the same generic name
for their respective institutions but utilized the same ideas as starting
points. Heubaum is quite aware -
almost, one is tempted to say, disconcertedly aware - of the difficulties posed
by his effort to divorce Semler’s Realschule from Pietism. We find Heubaum (i) characterizing Semler
as part of a group of modern, science-oriented preachers, namely, “the group of
the Heckers and Silberschlags” (1893, p. 70) - both Hecker and Silberschlag
(mentioned in the 1930s study) being, of course, fervent Pietists; (ii)
substituting the link of the Zeitgeist for a direct link between the
arch-Pietist Francke and Semler to account for their similar efforts (p. 74);
(iii) positing the difference between Francke and Semler as an altogether
theological one, with Semler said to take religion as mere “ornamental
decoration” (p. 75); and
most of all (iv) cautioning the reader that what he, the historian, has to say
about the place of Hecker in relation to Francke and Semler “has also been
utilized to the opposite effect” (p.
75). Heubaum’s cautionary note was
justified. Palmer (1885,
p. 118) had indeed protested vehemently against disclaimers of this
sort about the Pietism-Realschule connection. Above all the others, it is Ziegler who,
in the then latest and, in our possibly biased opinion, apt word, surveys the
evidence and tries to account for the contrary opinion in
wissenssoziologische style:
It really goes much too far to deny, along with Kramer
and Heubaum, the connection between Francke and Semler as well as the connection
between the Pietistic reform of schools and the founding of the first
Realschule such denial can be explained only by [present-day Pietistic
distrust both
of the “Realism” which has meanwhile grown so powerful
and of the natural sciences which serve as its foundation and pay little heed to
religious dogma. Because of all
that, one would like to disown the degenerate son who has become a nuisance and
to shake him off one’s coat-tails. But in vain… Pietism really must accept
the honor not only of being the father of the Realschule but also of
allowing itself to be described as such [muss ... der Pietismus sich wirklich
die Ehre gefallen lassen, der Vater der Realschule nicht nur zu sein, sondern
auch zu heissen]. [Ziegler 1895, pp. 196-97}
By adopting the metaphors of “father” and disowned
“degenerate son,” Ziegler nicely captures and foreshadows the idea that the
modern institution of German science was in part an unanticipated and, in some
quarters, distasteful by-product of Pietism. Kindred remarks are to be found in
Heubaum’s equivocating account of the period leading to the age of Pietism and
the Realschule (1893, p. 66): “Thus a utilitarian principle develops
quite unnoticed on the ideal soil of the Reformation which anticipates the
English philosophy of the 17th century in a practical fashion.” Also alerted to the pattern of
unanticipated and ironic consequences, Paulsen (1908, pp. 12 7-28) first describes
Francke’s Pädagogium in a now familiar way as including “mathematics and
natural science” but with “paramount importance [being] assigned, throughout the
course, to religious instruction…”
He then proceeds to note that “afterwards, a reaction set in; the
generation which had been fed on religious revivals and prayers was peculiarly
appreciative of the invectives of Voltaire - the age of Pietism was followed by
the age of Enlightenment!”
These remarks, cryptic as their formulation in terms of
unintended or ironic consequences may be, exhibit a shared sense for the
complexity of institutional and historical connections which transcend such
schematic dualisms as the Pietism-Enlightenment contrast reiterated in the
Becker critique. Whether such
dualistic thinking is heuristic or untenable is scarcely an issue to be settled
here. However, it must be said that
(i) Becker does not pause to elucidate the nature of the historical conflicts he
has in mind (the constraints of space limit us all); (ii) not only those now
familiar scholars of an earlier day, Heubaum ([1905] 1973, pp. 118-19) and
Paulsen (1896-97, 1:523-26),
but also Schmidt (1974), the exacting contemporary specialist on
Pietism, convey a distinct sense of reciprocal influence between Pietism and
rationalism as common predecessors of the Enlightenment; and (iii) a critique
guided by such dichotomies as Pietism versus the Enlightenment is bound to
result in different readings of the same sources by author and critic. Rejecting any simple dualism, Schmidt
(1974, pp. 66-67) sees the divergence of traditions that came together in
Pietism as erecting “a bridge between theology, the humanities and natural
science (eine Brücke zwischen Theologie, Geisteswissenschaft und
Naturwissenschaft).”
Did space allow further detailed discussions, as with
the Realschule
1116
controversy or the anatomizing of Max Weber’s
perspectives on Pietism and science, some inviting pieces of historical
reconstruction stated or implied in the critique would be dwelt upon here. Francke’s alleged hostility toward
science (Wissenschaft), for example, would be differentiated as directed
chiefly toward certain brands of theology and moral philosophy as academic
disciplines rather than toward the natural sciences as such (Oschlies [1969],
pp. 50-57, esp. his
quotation from Francke on p. 52n). Or as Martin Schmidt sums it
up,
Francke ultimately evaluated science positively and in
doing so linked Pietism to modernity: for him, science was observation and the
recognition of reality on the basis of such observation. In his conversion, doubt in the authority
of the Bible and of the Christian tradition, indeed, doubt in the authority and
reality of God Himself was more radically perceived than ever before. Yet that doubt is overcome - not through
the traditional means of authority but through the modern means of experience
which correspond to experiment in the natural sciences and to the critical
evaluation of sources in historical study. [Schmidt 1969, p.
210]
The debate over the place of science instruction in
Francke’s Padagogium would also be unfolded in more detail (Heubaum [1905] 1973, pp. 94, 135; Palmer 1885, p. 118; Ziegler 1895,
pp. 185-88). The suspenseful and
analytically informative story of Christian Wolff’s expulsion from Halle and
return to it would be told - the story of a rationalist (thus not quite a
scientist of the then emerging kind) who must give up his academic post for
having trespassed on the domain of theology - an expulsion, by the way, which
came as a shock even to those Pietists in Halle who had bitterly intrigued
against him. (That story is
interestingly told by Wolff himself [1841, pp. 146-51, 164-70] and most
thoroughly told by Carl Hinrichs [1971, pp. 388-441].)
So, too, the relationship of
1117
Merton ([1936] 1968, p. 644) wraps up this phase of the
Pietism-science connection by having Heubaum speak for him: “Heubaum summarizes
these developments by asserting that the essential progress in the teaching of
science and technology occurred in Protestant, and more precisely, in Pietistic
universities.” As with all
summaries, the meaning and validity of this one depend heavily on its contexts,
both in the case of “Puritanism, Pietism and Science” and in the reappraisal of
the hypothesis forming part of this paper on the fallacy of the latest word.
This particular summary was also
anchored in three references which are much emphasized in Becker’s scrupulous
effort at reanalysis since he reports having been unable to verify any of their
imputed content. As for the first
reference, to Paulsen (1908, p. 122), it is difficult to guess what fault Becker
finds with it. (Paulsen writes, “By
the end of the eighteenth century all the German universities had been reshaped
after the model of
Becker’s exercise in organized skepticism would have
proved useful had it only identified ambiguities and correctable references such
as these. It has, of course, done
much more. By reopening the
specific hypothesis of the Pietism-science connection, it just may extend and
deepen the interests of sociologists and other scholars in the complex question
of the institutional and cognitive interplay of science and religion. If the critique has not succeeded in
refuting the generic hypothesis, it may have succeeded, quite masterfully, in
assisting the
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