ABSTRACT
This extremely brief chapter should be viewed as notes on some points in the chapter by Volker Meja and Nico Stehr. Among sociolo gists the ups-and-downs in the fortunes of Merton’s nevertheless fun damental work are well-known: from the years in which any sociolo gist of note could not but make reference to his works,1 to a sort of partial abandonment which was largely linked to superficially held, political prejudices that drew fashionable consensus,2 and finally to a more recent widespread recovery even in Italy.3
