1984 - The Fallacy of The Latest Word. The Case of 'Pietism and Science'

The Fallacy of the Latest Word: The Case of "Pietism and Science"
Author(s): Robert K. Merton

Source: American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 89, No. 5 (Mar., 1984), pp. 1091-1121
Published by: The University of Chicago Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2779084 .
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The Fallacy of the Latest Word: The Case of

"Pietism and Science"'
Robert K. Merton
Columbia University
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, Columbia University,
New York, New York 10027.
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 doyen 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.
(C 1984 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved.
0002-9602/84/8905-0005$01.50
AJS Volume 89 Number 5

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American Journal of Sociology

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
Phoenix phenomenon clamors for systematic attention from historians and sociologists of science concerned to clarify the significant role of controversy in the growth
of scientific knowledge. However, limitations of space and empathy for a fellow editor
forbid analysis of that phenomenon here and now. For contextual observations on the
social and cognitive structure, dynamics, functions, dysfunctions, and sociology-ofknowledge significance of controversies in science see Merton ([1961] 1973), Nowotny
(1975), Markle and Petersen (1981), and Scientific Controversies, edited by A. L.
Caplan and H. T. Engelhardt, Jr. (1984), especially the essays by Ernan McMullin
("How Do Scientific Controversies End?") and Everett Mendelsohn ("The Political
Anatomy of Controversies in the Sciences").
3The
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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
KNOWLEDGE CLAIMS
AND EMPIRICAL
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 im1093


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. viixxix) 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.
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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 [n.b.] motivate and canalize the activities
of men' 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 swiftreading 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; otherfunctionally
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]
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."
5The
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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 religion and science
of the social institutions
In its more general and analytical form, it [the hypothesis] holds that
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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 occasionalfact 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).
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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 Warfareof 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 Geneva. In good positivistic
style of a parochial sort, it was no great leap from such exemplary episodes
to a belief in the logical and historical necessity for conflict between
religion and science in all their aspects.7
The Role of Rationality in Emerging Modern Science:
Pietism as a Strategic Polar Case
The 1930s study undertook the collateral inquiry into a possible Pietismscience 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 18ththis 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.
7Since
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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 significanceof rationality for an emerging interest in science within
the English tradition, so, too, it was assumed, would "enthusiastic" Pietism as a weaker counterpart in Germany. Max Weber had made analytical comparisons among the varieties of Anglo-American Puritanism
and Pietism. For the immediate purposes of the 1930s study, most in point
was his conclusion that "all in all, when we consider German Pietism
from the point of view important for us, we must admit a vacillation and
uncertainty in the religious basis of its asceticism which makes it definitely
weaker than the iron consistency of Calvinism, and which is partly the
result of Lutheran influence and partly of its emotional character"(Weber
[1904-5] 1930, pp. 128-39, at p. 137; italics added).
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, dom-
inated 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]).
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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 sci1100

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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 hypotheticodeductive 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 Ap1102

The Latest Word

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'sviews
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(Miinchen, 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 (Miunchen, 1921, 1920). 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.
100-101n]
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 GesammelteAufsfitze
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 Weberin which he states his tentative
conclusions about the connections between early modern science and
ascetic Protestantism generally and Pietism specifically. To be sure, Weber
1o 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

The Latest Word

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 con1105


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 deathto 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 secondorder 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
For the attitude of Protestant asceticism the decisive point was,
here....
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 hopedfrom the empirical knowledge of the divine laws
of nature to ascend to a grasp of the essence of the world, which on account
1106

The Latest Word

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." Combined with the attitude
tofides 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" 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 1(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.U 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. 5354. 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.
1108

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, 1:8138) 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 corroboratedexcess
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-corroboratedlow-level
falsifying hypothesis alone can lead tofalsification. There is nofalsification
before the emergence of a better theory" (1:35).
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 misinterpre13 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 11973] 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 arbitrarycondition 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 19thcentury 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

The Latest Word

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.
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).
14
lll


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).
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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 okonomischmathematischeRealschule 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."'6
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 "okonomisch-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).
1113


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 Mathematische 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 Halle, J. J. Hecker, . . . who
now actually called into existence the first institution of its kind which was
successful and prosperous, the "bkonomisch-mathematische
Realschule,"
which is still carried on.
. [Paulsen 1908, p. 133; italics added for obvious
reasons]
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

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significant connection between Pietism and the science-and-techniqueoriented 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)sh6wfsa 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 archPietist 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
connection between
the Pietistic reform
such denial can be
too far to deny, along with Kramer and Heubaum, the

Francke and Semler as well as the connection between
of schools and the founding of the first Realschule . . .
explained only by [present-day] Pietistic distrust both
1115


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. 127-28) first describes Francke's Pddagogium
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 Voltairethe 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 heuristicor 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 Brucke zwischen Theologie, Geisteswissenschaft und
Naturwissenschaft)."
Did space allow further detailed discussions, as with the Realschule
1116

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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 Halle University to Gottingen, Altdorf,
K6nigsberg, and other universities of the time deserves more detailed
analysis than Becker (1984) could give it. This takes on special point as
the secular component of Pietism begins to acquire a degree of autonomy,
leaving its theological roots and ties behind (as in the case of Gottingen),
a circumstance that definitely complicates the inquiry (Heubaum [1905]
1973, pp. 247-52). The case of Altdorf University raises the further problem of disentangling Pietism from Lutheranism (Halle was, after all,
founded as a "Lutheran" university); still, Merton's fleeting allusion can
now be seen as an overzealous incorporation of Altdorf into the domain
of Pietism. However, the Pietism-Konigsberg connection is not as difficult
to establish as Becker (1984, p. 1079, n. 8) seems to suppose; not, at least,
if we take as our point of departure what author and critic alike should
recognize as the often vacillating Heubaum ([1905] 1973, pp. 60-61, 15253).
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 Halle and
Gottingen. . . . The spirit of modern philosophy and science had invaded
the teaching in all faculties . . . the professors took up original scientific
research.")Merton's allusion to Michaelis ([1768] 1973) could not be crosschecked in time for the scheduled publication of this paper. And finally,
the Heubaum reference can indeed not be verified by looking up the cited
page number ([1905] 1973, p. 241), since this appears to be a typographical
error that has gone undetected for half a century. But one can turn to
pages 247-57 to find the discussion of the significance of Gottingen University for the early development of science and technology in Germany.
In retrospect, one finds oneself much preferring the informative and
straightforward Paulsen to the often equivocating Heubaum; here, however, they seem in reasonably close agreement.
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 Phoenix problem to reemerge.
What is plainly called for next is less disputation and more research,
ideally the kind of comprehensive and fine-grained archival research that
is beautifully exemplified by Charles Webster's (1975) fine monograph on
17th-century Puritanism and science.
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The Fallacy of the Latest Word: The Case of "Pietism and Science"

Author(s): Robert K. Merton

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The Fallacy of the Latest Word: The Case of

The resiliency exhibited by some theories or derived hypotheses,

AJS Volume 89 Number 5

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American Journal of Sociology

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The Latest Word

The generic hypothesis under discussion holds that at a time in Western

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American Journal of Sociology

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The Latest Word

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American Journal of Sociology

dictum, virtually every aspect of Pietist education tended to be planned

As for Pietist religious opposition to immediate "scientific claims and

of the social institutions

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The Latest Word

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American Journal of Sociology

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The Latest Word

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American Journal of Sociology

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The Latest Word

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American Journal of Sociology

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blinders by confining himself to those few pages devoted to the auxiliary

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American Journal of Sociology

That early cautionary note is itself incomplete. It might have gone on to

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American Journal of Sociology

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inexorable, unilinear progress in knowledge, despite minor and temporary

being developed in detail.

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American Journal of Sociology

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American Journal of Sociology

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American Journal of Sociology

In collaboration with Alfred Nordmann

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American Journal of Sociology

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