Robert K. Merton Totally Explained

Everything about Robert K Merton totally explained

ť This article is about the sociologist. For the economist, see Robert C. Merton.

Robert King Merton (July 4, 1910 – February 23, 2003, born Meyer R. Schkolnick to immigrant parents) was a distinguished American sociologist perhaps best known for having coined the phrase "self-fulfilling prophecy." He also coined many other phrases that have gone into everyday use, such as "role model" and "unintended consequences". He spent most of his career teaching at Columbia University, where he attained the rank of University Professor. It is a popular misconception that Robert K. Merton was one of Talcott Parsons’ students. Parsons was only a junior member of his dissertation committee, the others being Pitirim Sorokin, Carle C. Zimmermanm and the historian of science, George Sarton. The dissertation, a quantitative social history of the development of science in seventeenth-century England, reflected this interdisciplinary committee (Merton, 1985). Merton was heavily influenced by Pitirim Sorokin, who tried to balance large-scale theorizing with a strong interest in empirical research and statistical studies. Sorokin and Paul Lazarsfeld influenced Merton to occupy himself with middle-range theories.

Biography

Robert K. Merton was born to working class Jewish Eastern European immigrants on July 4, 1910, in Philadelphia. Educated in the South Philadelphia High School, he became a frequent visitor of the nearby Andrew Carnegie Library, The Academy of Music, Central Library, Museum of Arts and other cultural and educational centres. He started his sociological career under the guidance of George E. Simpson at Temple University in Philadelphia (1927-1931), and Pitrim A. Sorokin in Harvard University (1931-1936).
He taught at Harvard until 1939, when he became professor and chairman of the Department of Sociology at Tulane University. In 1941 he joined the Columbia University faculty, becoming Giddings Professor of Sociology in 1963. He was named to the University's highest academic rank, University Professor, in 1974 and became Special Service Professor upon his retirement in 1979, a title reserved by the Trustees for emeritus faculty who "render special services to the University." In recognition of his lasting contributions to scholarship and the University, Columbia established the Robert K. Merton Professorship in the Social Sciences in 1990. He was associate director of the University's Bureau of Applied Social Research from 1942 to 1971. He was an adjunct faculty member at Rockefeller University and was also the first Foundation Scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation. He withdrew from teaching in 1984.
Merton received many national and international honors for his research. He was one of the first sociologists elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the first American sociologist to be elected a foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. He was also a member of the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which awarded him its Parsons Prize, the National Academy of Education and Academica Europaea. Applied to the United States he sees the American dream as an emphasis on the goal of monetary success but without the corresponding emphasis on the legitimate avenues to march toward this goal. This leads to a considerable amount of (the Parsonian term of) deviance. This theory is commonly used in the study of criminology (specifically the strain theory).

Cultural goals	Institutionalized means	Modes of adaptation
+	+	Conformity
+	-	Innovation
-	+	Ritualism
-	-	Retreatism
±	±	Rebellion

Conformity is the attaining of societal goals by societal accepted means, while innovation is the attaining of those goals in unaccepted ways. Ritualism is the acceptance of the means but the forfeit of the goals. Retreatism is the rejection of both the means and the goals and rebellion is a combination of rejection of societal goals and means and a substitution of other goals and means. Innovation and ritualism are the pure cases of anomie as Merton defined it because in both cases there's a discontinuity between goals and means.

Sociology of science

Merton carried out extensive research into the sociology of science, developing the Merton Thesis explaining some of the causes of the scientific revolution, and the Mertonian norms of science, often referred to by the acronym "Cudos". This is a set of ideals that are dictated by what Merton takes to be the goals and methods of science and are binding on scientists. They include:

Communalism - the common ownership of scientific discoveries, according to which scientists give up intellectual property rights in exchange for recognition and esteem (Merton actually used the term Communism, but had this notion of communalism in mind, not Marxism);
Universalism - according to which claims to truth are evaluated in terms of universal or impersonal criteria, and not on the basis of race, class, gender, religion, or nationality;
Disinterestedness - according to which scientists are rewarded for acting in ways that outwardly appear to be selfless;
Organized Skepticism - all ideas must be tested and are subject to rigorous, structured community scrutiny.

The CUDOS set of Mertonian scientific norms is sometimes identified as Communism, Universalism, Disinterestedness, *Originality* (novelty in research contributions), and Skepticism (instead of Organized Skepticism). This is a subsequent modification of Merton's norm set, as he didn't refer to Originality in the essay that introduced the norms (The Normative Structure of Science [1942]).
He introduced many relevant concepts to the field, among them 'obliteration by incorporation' (when a concept becomes so popularized that its inventor is forgotten) and 'multiples' (theory about independent similar discoveries). Another much-discussed contribution was his identification of the Matthew effect. See also Stigler's law of eponymy.

Publications

"Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England," Osiris, Vol. IV, pt. 2, pp. 360-632. Bruges: St. Catherine Press, 1938, reissued: Howard Fertig, 2002, ISBN 0865274347 - The 1938 publication made Merton well known among historians of science . It was an attempt to refute Boris Hessen's famous marxist account of 1931 The Socio-economic Roots of Newton's Principia.

Social Theory and Social Structure (1949; revised and expanded, 1957 and 1968)

The Sociology of Science (1973)

Sociological Ambivalence (1976)

On the Shoulders of Giants: A Shandean Postscript (1985)

The Travels and Adventures of Serendipity: A Study in Sociological Semantics and the Sociology of Science, 2004

Further Information

Get more info on 'Robert K Merton'.

External Link Exchanges

Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:

<a href="http://robert_k__merton.totallyexplained.com">Robert K. Merton Totally Explained</a>

Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned.