George Becker

Pietism and Science: A Critique of Robert K. Merton's Hypothesis

The rapid rise of Western science over the past four centuries has been attributed by many scholars to the effect of ascetic Protestantism. Robert K. Merton claims for German Pietism an important role in this relationship. An examination of Mertons argument exposes important problem in his research. This investigation of sources either misinterpreted or ignored by Merton not only calls into question his conclusion concerning the relationship between German Pietism and science but also opens discussion on the more general relationship between ascetic Protestantism and science, a relationship that deserves further study.

Pietism's Confrontation with Enlightenment Rationalism: An Examination of the Relation between Ascetic Protestantism and Science

Based on his examination of 17th-century English Puritanism and 18th-century German Pietism, Merton concluded in his Protestantism-science thesis that ascetic Protestantism provided great impetus to the development of science. His evaluation of German Pietism as also supportive of science, however, largely rests on a static comparison of its religious ethos with that of English Puritanism. This study, based on original sources, challenges Mertons Pietism-science hypothesis via a historical examination that explores the changes in the European perception of science during the 17th and 18th centuries and, more broadly, the different institutional challenges that confronted the Puritan and Pietist movements. The study reveals that, despite their similarity of values, these movements responded in strikingly different fashion to the challenge of science due to variations in time, place, and attendant sociocultural realities. Considering the importance of the Pietism-science hypothesis to Mertons more inclusive ascetic Protestantism-science thesis, the discounting of the former may well call into question the validity of the latter.

The merton thesis: Oetinger and German Pietism, a significant negative case

The Merton thesis identifies two movements — English Puritanism and German Pietism — as causally significant in the development of the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. It attributes this connection to a strong compatibility between the values of ascetic Protestantism and those associated with modern science. This article questions Mertons conclusion regarding one of these movements, German Pietism, by arguing that the Pietist ethos stood in sharp conflict with what Merton has called the normative structure of science. One manifestation of this conflict involves Friedrich Oetingers articulation of a contending “religious-mystical” conception of science, which assigned a central place to feeling, intuition, the role of the divine, and a qualitative approach to nature. This conception of science, it is argued, provides the clearest indication of the conceptual and valuative distance that tended to separate Pietists from the “new science” of the 17th and 18th centuries.

Mad Genius Controversy

This article examines current thinking regarding the relation between creativity and psychopathology in the historical context of the changes in the intellectual assumptions regarding the nature of creative individuals during four periods of Western history: Greek antiquity, the Italian Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the Romantic Age. Particular attention is devoted to the romantics’ reformulation of historically antecedent ideas, including the conception of genius, and the subsequent reception of these changes in the field of philosophical–psychological speculation and the rising medical specialty of psychiatry. The article concludes with a discussion of some of the implications of these developments for current debates concerning creativity and attendant mental conditions.

The Continuing Path of Distortion: The Protestant Ethic and Max Weber's School Enrolment Statistics

Things are not always as they seem. A cursory examination of a table of statistics cited in the Weber thesis appears to reveal striking differences in the educational ‘preferences’ of Catholics and Protestants. Careful scrutiny, however, on a number of grounds, especially in light of the importance that Weber attaches to these statistics in the articulation of his thesis, reveals that not only are the statistics seriously compromised by errors and omissions, but they lead to an evolving state of confusion engendered by scholars who, while engaged in the concealment or ostensible correction of these flaws by often dubious means, have published changed and conflicting versions of Weber’s statistics. By examining two recently published new English translations of the Weber thesis, this study resolves and clarifies some of the uncertainties surrounding the proper interpretation of these statistics within the context of Weber ’s theoretical argument and the socio-political climate in which they were produced. The reader is invited to explore how reverential bias in classical scholarship actually emerges.