Re: Culture of Science?

Bunny and/or Roy (ccartwr1@kent.kent.edu)
14 Aug 1996 23:41:30 GMT

Joel and Lynn Gazis-Sax (gazissax@best.com) wrote:

: I'm a little leary of Weber, myself, Bunny. It was, in fact, Weber's
: theorum which I had in mind. You should note that the way his idea
: works is that at some distant point, Protestantism emerged among
: /some/ of the inhabitants of Europe. At first, you could detect the
: ideological boundaries quite clearly. But over time many of the
: ideas such as the value of hard work "seeped out" into the greater
: society. Today, therefore, you cannot tell Protestants from Catholics
: on the basis of the ethic.

I share your skepticism regarding Weber's hypotheses, but I believe
his ideas, however suspect they may be, played a major role in shaping
modern notions about the sciences and their methodologies.

Roy

--
"Papa Hegel he say that all we learn from history is that we learn nothing
from history. *I* know people who can't even learn from what happened this
morning. Hegel must have been taking the long view."
(John Brunner, "Stand on Zanzibar")