Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

“Speaking truth to power” refers to the belief that scientists, unimpeded by economic self-interest or partisan bias, will deliver honest and often uncomfortable truths to those in positions of power. It is the foundational claim of the sociology of science that only certain types of social structure enable scientists – or, rather, science as a social institution – to reach the truth and present it with due authority. In a series of pioneering articles, written at a time when science was actively enlisted in the service of the state and made subservient to totalitarian projects, Robert K. Merton (1938 , 1942) argued that a self-governed science was most congenial to the aims and principles of a free society, and that this autonomy was best guaranteed by the distinctive “ethos” of its practitioners, which he characterized by the norms of universalism, communitarism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism. Capable of regulating itself through these normative principles, science was entitled to demand freedom from external influences and pursue unhampered the acquisition of fundamental knowledge. Merton's depiction of a self-regulating science as the pillar of a democratic society and the best guarantee of uninterrupted scientific and technological progress reinforced the case of those scientists and politicians who, in the aftermath of World War II, believed that the state should ... log in or subscribe to read full text