Meaning and Moral Order: Explorations in Cultural Analysis

CHAPTER EIGHT. The Institutionalization of Science

C H A P T E R E I G H T The Institutionalization of Science Cultural forms are produced, selected in different social environments, and institutionalized. The process of institutionalization increases the likelihood that a particular cultural form will continue to be reproduced even if the environment changes. Through this process, culture ceases to be merely a set of ideas and becomes a social institution. People typically do not invent or adopt new ideas without the assistance of some institution that has disseminated these ideas. The relations between ideas and the social environment are thus mediated by institutions . In these institutions, social resources are channeled specifically into the creation, dramatization, and disseminationof ideas. These "means of cultural production," as they can be called, are like other organizations. First, they require a sufficient degree of autonomy (differentiation) from other organizations to be able to apply resources to the attainment of specified ends. Second, social resources must be availablefor the staffing of creative (productive) and administrativeroles and for the payment of other costs incurred in developing and disseminating cultural forms. Third, an internal system of communication and organization must be present in order for the various activities involved in producingcultural forms to be coordinated. And finally, a degree of legitimacy is required in order to sustain favorable relations with centers of power, the state, potential clients or recruits, and other significant collectivities in the broader environment. When these conditions have been satisfied, a cultural form has become institutionalized. The development of modern science provides an instructiveexample 265 266 The Institutionalizationof Science of the process by which a cultural form becomes institutionalized. Although the production and diffusion of scientific ideas now occurs on such a vast scale that the existence of science as a cultural form is often taken for granted, science nevertheless has gained prominence only through the process of becoming a social institution. The crucial period in this process is generally taken to be the seventeenth century. During this period science acquired the requisiteposition in relation to its social environment that allowed it to develop subsequently into the major cultural institution that it is today. Before (and even during) the seventeenth century , competition and selection influenced the relation that different scientific approaches came to have with particular social environments. But the significant accomplishment of the seventeenth century was science's achievement of sufficient autonomy, resources, communication and organization , and legitimacy for its development to become largely self-sustaining and in large measure self-guided. On each of these dimensions of institutionalization, science was furthered by the special conditions that existed in Europe at the time. Examining the relations between science and these conditions therefore provides a window for observing the process of cultural institutionalization more generally.1 Historians of science characteristically distinguish between internalist and externalist approaches to the development of science. Internalist approaches focus on the unfolding of ideas within science itself as the prime mover of its development. Externalist approaches emphasize interaction between science and the social environment. Although both approaches are necessary, internalist explanations have long had the upper hand. Because science has been responsible for a number of discoveries about the natural world and because many of these discoveries have contributed to technological development, it has been easy for scholars and the public alike to assume that science is uniquely suited to arrive at the truth. Although this assumption can be disputed, it has probably obscured understanding of the development of science by reinforcing the internalist perspective. In regarding science strictly as truth, one can be tempted to explain its development as the simple unfolding of an inner intellectual logic. According to Barry Barnes (1974), this point of view is in fact the one currently taken by most historians of science of both Popperian and Kuhnian persuasion.2 At present, therefore, efforts to examine the institutionalization of science with reference to larger social conditions run counter to the mainstream of historical explanation. Yet it seems hard to deny that institutionalization is a social process—even when it involves science. Joseph The Institutionalization of Science 267 Ben-David (1971), who has recognized this fact more clearly than most, puts it well when he says that certain aspects of science are "eminently sociological phenomena." To say this in no way jeopardizes the importance of examining the internal dynamics of scientific ideas. But it poses the importance of also investigatingthe institutionalization of science in relation to social...