According to Robert K. Merton’s “The Normative Structure of Science,” the instituonalized goal of science is to extend the certification of knowledge. \u00a0In other words, science has s goal to find as much new information out as possible through experimentation and studies in order to expand upon what we already know. \u00a0With more certified information our society can operate in a more effeicent manner and ultimately become a better society. \u00a0Also accroding to the article, there are a set of four institutionalized imperatives, which are universalism, communism, distinterestedness, and organized skeptism which are said to compise the “ethos of sciene” (Merton, 1973). \u00a0In this blog post, I am aim to analyze why each of these four institutionalized imperatives are so crucial to good science and ultimately the betterment of our society.<\/p>\n
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The first\u00a0institutionalized imperative, universalism, means that any prior status of a sceintist should not affect the scientific process in any way and that scientific validity must always go through the same process in order to maintian integriy in the industry. \u00a0In other words, if a highly esteemed scientist comes up with a radical claim, or any claim for that matter, that scientists work should have to go through the same tough fact checking process that any other sceintist would have to go through. No special treament shall be granted no matter the resume of a scientist, as this would give way for more accomplished scientists to become lazy in their work and thus not produce work of any real meaning. \u00a0The second institutionalized imperative, communism, refers to the idea that all sceintists should have access to all the information possibly available to them, not allowing for some scientists to withold “secret” infromation. \u00a0In this way, science can always be working to achieve its maximum potential when it comes to creating new science as anyone conducting research will have access to all prior research in the field. \u00a0The third institutionalized imperative,\u00a0distinterestedness is similar to universalism in that its signialing to the scientific community that their individual achievements and work are far less important than improving science as a whole. \u00a0This allows for egos to be held in check and hopefully allows for more progress to be made and scientists working with a more open mind. \u00a0The fourth institutionalized imperative, organized skeptcism, is also similar to the first\u00a0institutionalized imperative as it means that all scientists work should recieve skepticism no matter how successful they have been in the past. \u00a0As an example, if Steve Jobs had created a new iPhone and no one bothered to check whether or not it was functioning at its maximum capability, the iPhone could have a terrible error that would not only have hurt Steve Jobs and his company Apple, but also would have set the science community back in terms of progress. \u00a0Thanks to extremmely vaulabe work done by\u00a0Robert K. Merton, the four institutionalized imperatives: universalism, communism, distinterestedness, and organized skeptism serve as guidelines for how to create good science and are crucial to the\u00a0betterment of our society.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
According to Robert K. Merton’s “The Normative Structure of Science,” the instituonalized goal of science is to extend the certification of knowledge. \u00a0In other words, … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9925,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[470626],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5710"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9925"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5710"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5710\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5712,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5710\/revisions\/5712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5710"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5710"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/st112a-fall20\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5710"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}