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ОТ РЕДАКЦИИ
Ащеулова Надежда Алексеевна
главный редактор специального выпуска, руководитель Центра социолого-науковедчесских исследований,
Учреждения Российской академии наук Санкт-Петербургского филиала Института истории естествознания и техники им. С. И. Вавилова РАН, г. Санкт-Петербург;
e-mail: [email protected]
Роберт К. Мертон и отечественная социология науки
В июле 2010 года исполнилось 100 лет со дня рождения Роберта К. Мертона — социолога, сыгравшего одну из центральных ролей в мировой социологии ХХ века. В ознаменование этого события Центр социолого-науковедческих исследований Санкт-Петербургского филиала ИИЕТ им. С. И. Вавилова РАН совместно с 23 исследовательским комитетом социологии науки и технологий (RC23) Международной социологической ассоциации подготовил специальный выпуск журнала «Социология науки и технологий». Обращение к Роберту Мертону обусловлено не только (и не столько) внешним обстоятельством — памятной датой. Имя этого выдающегося социолога неразрывно связано с социологией науки и ее легитимацией: Мертон стоял у истоков и был первым президентом RC23, формировал сети международных контактов социологов науки. Нельзя обойти вниманием и тот факт, что в 60-е годы прошлого столетия началась активная рецепция идей Мертона в отечественной социологии науки и многие представители советской научной элиты поддерживали с известным исследователем из США дружеские и профессиональные контакты. Мертон явился значительной фигурой для советской социологии.
Основные вехи биографии Роберта Мертона давно стали хрестоматийными. При этом важно отметить, что своими корнями и профессиональным становлением он связан с Российской империей: его отец был выходцем с Украины. Как известно, «Мертон» — псевдоним, настоящее имя — Мейер Школьник.
And so, just as Ehrich Weiss, the son of Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss had become Harry Houdini, naming himself after the celebrated French magician, Robert Houdin, the 14-year-old Meyer R. Schkolnick fleetingly became Robert K. Merlin, after the far more celebrated magician of Arthurian legend. Merlin, in turn, soon became Merton when my mentor Hop gently observed that Merlin was a bit hackneyed. By the time I arrived at Temple
College, my close friends were more often than not calling me Bob Merton and I did not discourage them. I rather liked the sound of it, no doubt because it seemed "more American" back then in the 1920s. With the warm consent of my devoted Americanizing mother — she attended night school far more religiously than the synagogue — and the bland agreement of my rather uninterested father, this was followed by the legal transformation of my name some 65 years ago1.
Он начал свою социологическую карьеру под руководством Джорджа Э. Симпсона. Встреча с П. А. Сорокиным во многом определила его судьбу: Р. К. Мертон работал в качестве научного сотрудника у Питирима Александровича. Вот как он сам вспоминает об этом в автобиографической лекции, прочитанной 28 апреля 1994 года в Филадельфии на ежегодной встрече Американского совета научных обществ (the American Council of Learned Societies):
Taking his assistant in hand, George Simpson also saw to it that I would see and hear key figures at an annual meeting of the American Sociological Society. There I met Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin, the founding chairman of the Department of Sociology then being tardily established at Harvard. That too proved to be a consequential encounter. For I would surely not have dared apply for graduate study at Harvard had Sorokin not encouraged me to do so. After all, my college advisers had warned me that Temple was still not fully accredited. To which I replied, rather ineptly, that it was the scholar Sorokin, not the institution Harvard, that mattered most to me. For, as a rather arrogant undergraduate, I had brought myself to believe — not entirely without foundation — that I knew just about everything American sociology had to offer in the late 1920s, although I had to confess to having only peripheral knowledge of the older and, to me, more evocative European traditions of sociological thought. Sorokin had recently published his Contemporary Sociological Theories, a wideranging, contentious overview of, in the main, European sociology, and plainly he was the teacher I was looking for. Moreover, it was evident that Sorokin was not your ordinary academic sociologist. Imprisoned three times by czarists and then three times by the Bolsheviks, he had been secretary to Alexandr Kerensky, the Socialist Revolutionary Prime Minister of Russia, and had had a death sentence commuted into exile by the normally unsparing Lenin. That too was bound to matter to me since, like many another Temple College student during the Great Depression, I was a dedicated socialist. In the event, I did nervously apply to Harvard, did receive a scholarship there, and soon found myself embarked on a new phase in a life of learning2.
Р. Мертон преподавал в Гарварде до 1938 года. В 1941-м он присоединился к университетской элите Колумбийского университета, с которым был связан до последних лет.
Роль, которую сыграл в интеллектуальном становлении Р. Мертона П. А. Сорокин, общеизвестна. Известно и то, с каким уважением и почтением относился знаменитый ученик к не менее знаменитому учителю. Вместе с тем его интересовало состояние советской науки в 1920—1930-е годы. Как свидетельствует исследовательница
1 A Life of Learning by Robert K.Merton. Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1994 // ACLS Occasional paper. № 25. URL: http://www.acls.org/Publications/OP/Haskins/1994_RobertKMerton.pdf
2 Ibid.
Professor S. Kugel Industrialny Pr. 11-2-174 Leningrad [St. Petersburg] 195426 USSR
Dear Professor Kugel,
X have just returned from a short stay in Norway and England to find your kind note of August 8th waiting for me. I am glad to learn that "The Matthew Effect” is to be translated into Russian. I shall be glad to continue sending you reprints along with the enclosures if you will let me know which ones you have received. (I failed to keep a record of those sent to you previously.)
So, too. I'll be glad to send future works for possible translation into Russian.
In the meantime, very best collegial regards to you and your colleagues with the hope that things will be for the better in this time of enormous social change.
Sincerely, a _ с
/ЙДи
Robert K. Merton
Письмо Р. Мертона профессору С. А. Кугелю
из Германии, он читал (конечно, в переводах) труды Бухарина, Гессена, Райнова. «Я просила его мне объяснить, с какими работами советского периода науки в России (Бухарина, Гессена и Райнова) он был знаком, и какие формы коммуникации велись. Он мне очень любезно ответил: "As it happens, I never met or corresponded with any of them. И дальше: I knew Bukharin's Historical Materialism in its English translation, of course, and his later introductory essay to "Science at the Crossroads (1932). Checking my reference to B in my 1945 "paradigm for the sociology of knowledge" I find myself referring to "the questionable thesis" "only proletarian [social] science has valid insight into certain aspects of social reality." And of course, like my colleagues, I was disturbed — rather, outraged — by his execution after Stalin's notorious purge trials"»1.
Влияние Роберта Мертона на становление советской и постсоветской социологии в России было велико. Вряд ли будет преувеличением назвать Р. Мертона ключевой фигурой для российской социологии второй половины ХХ столетия. Начиная с 1960-х годов, труды Р. Мертона интенсивно осваиваются советскими обществоведами, структурный функционализм, несмотря на доминирование идеологически предзаданной концепции К. Маркса, становится востребованной объяснительной теорией в советской социологии. Книги американского социолога читают на английском, их привозят из зарубежных командировок, передают в машинописных версиях, постепенно произведения Мертона начинают переводить
1 См. наст. изд.: Винклер Р.-Л. Краткие заметки (немецкого) бывшего ГДРовского социолога науки.
и издавать в СССР. Теоретические идеи Мертона оказали значительное влияние на развитие методологии социологических исследований в нашей стране, особенно социологии науки.
Готовя этот номер, редакция считала своей первостепенной задачей показать связи Р. К. Мертона с советской/российской социологией, выражающиеся не только в теоретической экспликации его идей отечественными социологами, но и в сети личных коммуникаций, тех неформальных дружеских контактах, которые установились между классиком американской социологии и отечественными исследователями.
В 1961 году в составе делегации американских социологов Р. Мертон приезжал в СССР, выступал с лекцией на философском факультете Ленинградского университета1.
В 1966 году в Эвиане на VI Всемирном социологическом конгрессе советские социологи встречались и дискутировали с Р. Мертоном2.
Слева направо: Н. В. Новиков, А. Г. Здравомыслов, Г. В. Осипов, Е. В. Осипова, Р. Мертон в Эвиане на VI Всемирном социологическом конгрессе, 1966 г.3
1 А. Г. Здравомыслов: «Социология как жизненное кредо» // International Biography and History of Russian Sociology Projects feature interviews and autobiographical materials collected from scholars who participated in the intellectual movements spurred by the Nikita Khrushchev’s liberalization campaign. The materials are posted as they become available, in the language of the original, with the translations planned for the future. Dr. Boris Doktorov, Dmitri Shalin are editing the projects. URL: http://www.unlv.edu/centers/cdclv/archives/Interviews/zdravomyslov_06b.html
2 См. наст. изд.: Ядов В. А. Как мы с Галиной Андреевой вступили в публичную дискуссию с Р. Мертоном; Кон И. С. Воспоминания о Роберте Мертоне.
3 Копия фотографии предоставлена Е. А. Здравомысловой (из архива проф. А. Г. Здраво-мыслова).
В разные годы Р. Мертона связывали тесные профессиональные отношения с российскими социологами — Ю. А. Замошкиным, Н. В. Мотрошиловой, А. Г. Здравомысловым, Е. З. Мирской, С. А. Кугелем, Н. Е. Покровским, выражающиеся в систематической и многолетней переписке, пересылке статей, книг и других материалов1.
Можно сказать, что целое поколение российских социологов-шестидесятников, было воспитано «на Мертоне».
Cumulative Advantage and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property
By Robert K. Merton*
Дарственная надпись Р. Мертона профессору Н. В. Мотрошиловой
?<*>?, Об
Robert К. Merton
7 Reference Groups, Invisible Colleges, and Deviant Behavior in Science*
Дарственная надпись Р. Мертона профессору Е. З. Мирской
А. Г. Здравомыслов пишет об этой встрече так: «Во второй раз я встретился с Мертоном в 1966 году в Эвиане на VI Всемирном социологическом конгрессе: Т. Парсонс и Р. Мертон пригласили Г. В. Осипова с супругой, Н. В. Новикова и меня на обед в швейцарский ресторан на берегу Женевского озера. Сохранилась памятная фотография, которую я передал в Сообщество профессиональных социологов. Третья встреча с Мертоном состоялась в 1994 году в Нью-Йорке, у него дома». URL: http://www.unlv.edu/centers/cdclv/archives/Interviews/ zdravomyslov_06b.html
1 Сайт Сообщества профессиональных социологов. URL: www.sociolog.net/inmemoriam.
html
Бесспорно, Р. Мертон остается почитаемой фигурой как в российском, так и в международном социологическом сообществе, интерес к его творчеству не угасает: непросто охватить все работы, вышедшие уже после смерти великого социолога, так или иначе затрагивающие его наследие. Р. Мертону был посвящен один из номеров журнала “Social Studies of Science”1, опубликовавший обширную библиографию американского социолога. Архив Роберта Мертона, переданный в 2006 году Х. Закерман библиотеке Колумбийского университета, является поис-тине «золотой жилой» для исследователей в области интеллектуальной истории и общественной жизни ХХ века2. В юбилейный 2010 год вышла коллективная монография двенадцати известных социологов под редакцией президента Научного совета по социальным исследованиям Крэйга Калхуна3.
С именем Р. Мертона связаны многие направления социологических исследований, но прежде всего оно стало эпонимом для социологии науки, так что словосочетание «мертонианская социология науки» давно и прочно вошло в научный оборот. Особенно хочется подчеркнуть ту знаковую роль, которую сыграл американский социолог для институализации этой области социологии. В 1966 году Р. Мертон стал учредителем и организатором, а также первым президентом 23 исследовательского комитета социологии науки и технологий (RC23) в рамках Международной социологической ассоциации (ISA) и возглавлял его с 1966 по 1974 год. Деятельность Мертона на этом посту во многом определила теоретическое и институциональное развитие социологии науки в мировом масштабе. Российская социология медленно и непросто входит в мировое социологическое сообщество, социологи участвуют в международных социологических мероприятиях — конгрессах, конференциях, проектах — и организациях. Работа в 23 исследовательском комитете социологии науки и технологий Международной социологической ассоциации — важный элемент этого процесса. Среди российских социологов особенной чести — быть членом Правления данного комитета — удостаивались в разные годы представители ленинградской/петербургской социологической школы С. А. Кугель и Н. А. Ащеулова, будучи в свое время руководителями Центра социолого-науковедческих исследований ИИЕТ им. С. И. Вавилова РАН.
Влияние Р. Мертона на развитие социологии показано в ряде статей номера. Хочется обратить внимание читателей на становление и развитие социологии науки в Ленинграде (Санкт-Петербурге). Так, в 1992 году международный научный коллектив подготовил учебное пособие «Введение в социологию науки» — первое издание такого рода в нашей стране. В этой книге есть раздел, в котором помещены статьи некоторых западных социологов науки, и прежде всего знаменитая работа Р. Мертона «Эффект Матфея в науке II»4.
1 Social Studies of Science. 2004. December. 34 (6). URL:http://sss.sagepub.com/content/34/6.toc
2 Papers of Robert K. Merton, Pioneer // American Sociology. Donated to Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library in Columbia University Libraries. URL: http://www.columbia.edu/ cu/lweb/
3 Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science (2010) / ed. by Craig Calhoun. Columbia University Press/SSRC. URL: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15112-2/ robert-k-merton
4 Эффект Матфея в науке II. Совокупное преимущество и символичность интеллектуальной собственности // Введение в социологию науки. Часть II. СПб.: Изд-во Санкт-Петер-буршского университета экономии и финансов, 1992. С. 3—21.
Редакция надеется, что содержащиеся в номере материалы дополнят уже сложившийся у научной общественности образ известного ученого. Разнообразие исследовательских позиций и теоретических подходов авторов данного номера позволит составить целостную картину рецепции идей Р. Мертона в советской/ российской социологии науки. Мы искренне признательны всем коллегам, принявшим участие в выпуске данного номера и оказавшим нам помощь в его подготовке. Редакция журнала благодарит за возможность публикации оригиналов писем П. А. Сорокина и Р. К. Мертона куратора семейного наследия Питирима Сорокина, доктора философии Университета Висконсина Павла Петровича Кротова1.
1 Оригиналы опубликованных писем хранятся в Специальной коллекции Питирима Со-
рокина в Саскачеванском университете (Канада)
3 Campus Drive University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada S7N 5A4
URL: http://library2.usask.ca/sorokin/Credits
EDITORIAL
Nadia A. Asheulova
Director of the Centre for Sociology of Science and Science Studies,
St Petersburg Branch of the Institute for the History of Science and Technology named after Sergey I. Vavilov,
Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg;
e-mail: [email protected]
Robert K. Merton and the Russian Sociology of Science
The 100th anniversary of Robert Merton’s birth was celebrated in July 2010. He was one of the leading sociologists of the 20th century. In honor of this event, the Center for Sociology of Science and Science Studies, Institute for the History of Science and Technology named after Sergey I. Vavilov, St Petersburg Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences together with the Research Committee on the Sociology of Science and Technology RC23 of the International Sociological Association prepared a special issue of the journal “Sociology of Science and Technology”. It was not only this date that made us look at Robert Merton, but also the fact that his name was so closely connected with emergence and legitimization of the academic subfield sociology of science. Merton was one of the founders and the first president of RC23. One should not neglect the fact that Russian sociology of science started to actively absorb Merton’s ideas in the 1960s and that many of the Soviet scientific elite maintained friendly and professional contacts with this eminent scholar. Merton became an important personality for Soviet sociology.
Robert Merton’s main biographical facts are available in standard textbooks. His upbringing and professional formation were connected with the Russian empire: his father was an immigrant from Ukraine. He was born Meyer Schkolnick and only later he changed his name to Merton:
And so, just as Ehrich Weiss, the son of Rabbi Mayer Samuel Weiss had become Harry Houdini, naming himself after the celebrated French magician, Robert Houdin, the 14-year-old Meyer R. Schkolnick fleetingly became Robert K. Merlin, after the far more celebrated magician of Arthurian legend. Merlin, in turn, soon became Merton when my mentor Hop gently observed that Merlin was a bit hackneyed. By the time I arrived at Temple College, my close friends were more often than not calling me Bob Merton and I did not discourage them. I rather liked the sound of it, no doubt because it seemed "more American" back then in the 1920s. With the warm consent of my devoted Americanizing
Professor S. Kugel Industrialny Pr. 11-2-174 Leningrad [St. Petersburg] 195426 USSR
Dear Professor Kugel,
X have just returned from a short stay in Norway and England to find your kind note of August 8th waiting for me. I am glad to learn that "The Matthew Effect1' is to be translated into Russian. I shall be glad to continue sending you reprints along with the enclosures if you will let me know which ones you have received. (I failed to keep a record of those sent to you previously.)
So, too. I'll be glad to send future works for possible translation into Russian.
In the meantime, very best collegial regards to you and your colleagues with the hope that things will be for the better in this time of enormous social change.
mother — she attended night school far more religiously than the synagogue — and the bland agreement of my rather uninterested father, this was followed by the legal transformation of my name some 65 years ago1.
He started his sociological career under the guidance of George E. Simpson. An encounter with Pitirim A. Sorokin decided largely his fate: R. K. Merton worked as a research assistant to Sorokin at Harvard. These are his recollections from a biographical lecture delivered on April 28, 1994 at the annual meeting of the American Council of Learned Societies:
Taking his assistant in hand, George Simpson also saw to it that I would see and hear key figures at an annual meeting of the American Sociological Society. There I met Pitirim Alexandrovich Sorokin, the founding chairman of the Department of Sociology then being tardily established at Harvard. That too proved to be a consequential encounter. For I would surely not have dared apply for graduate study at Harvard had Sorokin not encouraged me to do so. After all, my college advisers had warned me that Temple was still not fully accredited. To which I replied, rather ineptly, that it was the scholar Sorokin, not the institution Harvard, that mattered most to me. For, as a rather arrogant undergraduate, I had brought myself to believe — not entirely without
1 A Life of Learning by Robert K. Merton. Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1994 // ACLS Occasional paper. № 25. URL: http://www.acls.org/Publications/OP/Haskins/1994_RobertK-Merton.pdf
Robert K. Merton
R. Merton’s letter to Professor S. A. Kugel
foundation — that I knew just about everything American sociology had to offer in the late 1920s, although I had to confess to having only peripheral knowledge of the older and, to me, more evocative European traditions of sociological thought. Sorokin had recently published his Contemporary Sociological Theories, a wideranging, contentious overview of, in the main, European sociology, and plainly he was the teacher I was looking for. Moreover, it was evident that Sorokin was not your ordinary academic sociologist. Imprisoned three times by czarists and then three times by the Bolsheviks, he had been secretary to Alexandr Kerensky, the Socialist Revolutionary Prime Minister of Russia, and had had a death sentence commuted into exile by the normally unsparing Lenin. That too was bound to matter to me since, like many another Temple College student during the Great Depression, I was a dedicated socialist. In the event, I did nervously apply to Harvard, did receive a scholarship there, and soon found myself embarked on a new phase in a life of learning1.
He taught at Harvard until 1938. He joined the academic guards of Columbia University in 1941 and sustained his relationship with it until his last years.
P. A. Sorokin’s role in R. Merton’s intellectual development is well known. It is also known that the famous pupil felt deep respect and veneration for his not less distinguished mentor. In the 1920s to 1930s he was interested in Soviet science. A German woman scholar provides evidence that he had read, in translation, works by Bukharin, Hessen and Rainov. «I asked him to explain me what works in the Soviet period of development of the sociology of science (Bukharin, Hessen, Rainov) he knew and whether some forms of communication existed. His answer was very kind: "As it happens, I never met or corresponded with any of them." And further: "I knew Bukharin's Historical Materialism in its English translation, of course, and his later introductory essay to "Science at the Crossroads (1932). Checking my reference to B in my 1945 "paradigm for the sociology of knowledge" I find myself referring to "the questionable thesis" "only proletarian [social] science has valid insight into certain aspects of social reality." And of course, like my colleagues, I was disturbed — rather, outraged — by his execution after Stalin's notorious purge trials"»2.
Robert Merton’s impact on the formation of Soviet and post-Soviet sociology in Russia was great. It would not be an exaggeration to call Merton the key personality for Russian sociology in the second half of the 20th century. Beginning from the 1960s, Soviet sociologists started to intensively explore Merton’s writings. Soviet sociology came to vigorously use structural functionalism as an explanatory theory, despite Marx’ dominant concept that had been pre-determined ideologically.
Books by the American sociologist were read in English; they were brought into Russia from professional trips abroad, handed over in typewritten copies, and gradually Merton’s works came to be translated and published in the USSR.
When preparing this issue the editors’ principal task was to show R. K. Merton’s ties with Soviet/Russian sociology that found their expression not only in the theoretical explication of his ideas by Russian sociologists, but also in networks of personal communications, those informal friendly contacts that had been established between classic American sociology and Russian scholars.
1 A Life of Learning by Robert K. Merton...
2 See the present issue of Journal: Winkler R. -L. Short Notes of the Sociologist of Science from the Former German Democratic Republic.
From left to right: N. V. Novikov, A. G. Zdravomyslov, G. V. Osipov, E. V. Osipova, R. Merton at the Sixth World Congress of Sociology in Evian, 19661
In 1961 as a member of the American sociologists’ delegation, R. Merton came to the USSR, delivered a lecture at the Philosophy Department of Leningrad University2. At the Sixth World Congress of Sociology in Evian the Soviet sociologists had meetings and discussions with R. Merton3.
At different times R. Merton sustained close professional relationship with Russian sociologists: Yu. A. Zamoshkin, N. V. Motroshilova, A. G. Zdravomyslov, E. Z. Mirskaya, S. A. Kugel, N. E. Pokrovsky which found expression in regular and long-standing correspondence, exchange of books, articles and other materials4.
1 The photo copy presented by E. A. Zdravomyslova (from Prof. A. G. Zdravomyslov’s archive).
A. G. Zdravomyslov’s description of the meeting R. Merton: “ I met Merton for the second time at
the Sixth World Congress of Sociology in Evian, 1966. T. Parsons and R. Merton invited G.V. Osipov and his wife, as well as N.V. Novikov and me for a dinner to a Swiss restaurant at the shore of Lake Geneva. I handed over this photo to the Community of professional sociologists. I met Merton for the third time in 1994, at his home in New York”.
URL: http://www.unlv.edu/centers/cdclv/archives/Interviews/zdravomyslov_06b.html
2 A. G. Zdravomyslov: «Sociology as creed of life» // International Biography and History of Russian Sociology Projects feature interviews and autobiographical materials collected from scholars who participated in the intellectual movements spurred by the Nikita Khrushchev's liberalization campaign. The materials are posted as they become available, in the language of the original, with the translations planned for the future. Dr. Boris Doktorov, Dmitri Shalin are editing the projects. URL: http://www.unlv.edu/centers/cdclv/archives/Interviews/zdravomyslov_06b.html
3 See the present issue: Yadov V. A. How Galina Andreeva and I got into public discussion with Robert Merton; Kon I. S. Remembering Robert Merton.
4 Professional sociologists’ community. URL: www.sociolog.net/inmemoriam.html
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Cumulative Advantage and the Symbolism of Intellectual Property
By Robert K. Merton*
R. Merton’s commemorative inscription to Professor N. V. Motroshilova
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7 Reference Groups, Invisible Colleges, and Deviant Behavior in Science*
R. Merton’s commemorative inscription to Professor E. Z. Mirskaya
It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole 1960s generation of Russian sociologists were brought up “on Merton”.
No doubt, R. Merton remains a well-respected personality both in Russian and global sociologist communities. The interest in his activity does not weaken. It is not easy to encompass all works that have been published after the great sociologist’s death that are related somehow to his legacy. One of the Social Studies of Science1 issues was dedicated to R. Merton which included a comprehensive bibliography of the American sociologist. Robert Merton’s archive, handed over in 2006 by H. Zuckerman to the library of Columbia University, is a rich vein for scholars of intellectual history and social life in the 20th century2. In 2010 Craig Calhoun, the President of the Social Science Research Council, gathering together twelve major sociologists, published the new book “Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science”3.
1 Social Studies of Science. December 2004; 34 (6). URL:http://sss.sagepub.com/content/34/6.toc
2 Papers of Robert K. Merton, Pioneer in American Sociology. Donated to Columbia’s Rare Book & Manuscript Library in Columbia University Libraries. URL: http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/
3 Robert K. Merton: Sociology of Science and Sociology as Science (2010) / ed. by Craig Calhoun. Columbia University Press/SSRC. URL: http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-15112-2/ robert-k-merton
R. Merton’s name is connected with many directions in sociological research, but first of all it became the eponym for sociology of science, because the phrase the “Merto-nian sociology of science” became widely accepted by the scientific community. That crucial role the American sociologist played in the institualization of this sociological field should be especially highlighted. In 1966, R. Merton became founder, organizer and the first President of The Research Committee on the Sociology of Science and Technology RC23 (International Sociological Association) until 1974. Merton’s activity at this post was in many ways decisive for theoretical and institutional development of the sociology of science worldwide.
Russian sociology has been re-entering the global sociologists’ community slowly and not without difficulties. Sociologists take part in international sociology events: congresses, conferences, projects, as well as in organizations. Working in the RC23 of the International Sociological Association is an important part of this process. Among Russian sociologists, a special honor on this Committee was conferred in different years to members of the Leningrad/St. Petersburg sociological school, who were selected as Board Members of RC23: S. A. Kugel and N. A. Asheulova. These two scholars have now been consecutively directors of the Center for Sociology of Science and Science Studies Institute for the History of Science and Technology named after Sergey I. Vavilov, St. Petersburg Branch, Russian Academy of Sciences.
The editors hope that this issue will supplement the image of this distinguished sociologist that the scientific community has already created. Diversity of research perspectives and theoretical approaches of this issue’s contributors will enable a comprehensive picture of how R. Merton’s ideas have been assimilated in the Soviet-Russian sociology of science. We are sincerely grateful to all colleagues who participated in the publication of this issue and to those who helped prepare it.
The editors thank Pavel Petrovich Krotov, (PhD, Philosophy, University of Wisconsin), curator of Pitirim Sorokin’s family heritage, for possibility of publishing the original letters1.
1 The original letters are kept in The Pitirim A. Sorokin Collection, the Special Collections
Department at the University of Saskatchewan Library, Canada:
3 Campus Drive University of Saskatchewan Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada S7N 5A4
URL: http://library2.usask.ca/sorokin/Credits
