ABSTRACT
We have already referred to a department of science that we called the Science of Sciences (Wissenschaftslehre). This science, starting from logic and to some extent also from epistemology, treats of the general rules of procedure in use in the other individual sciences. But there is another science about science which is called the Sociology of Science (Wissenssoziologie) 1 and treats of science as a social phenomenon. That is, it analyzes the social factors and processes that produce the specifically scientific type of activity, condition its rate of development, determine its direction toward certain subjects rather than other equally possible ones, foster some methods of procedure in preference to others, set up the social mechanisms that account for success or failure of lines of research or individual performances, raise or depress the status and influence of scientists (in our sense) and their work, and so on. Our emphasis upon the fact that the workers in the fields of tooled knowledge are apt to form distinct vocational groups qualifies particularly well for conveying to the reader the reasons why, and the extent to which, science constitutes a proper subject of sociological research. Our interest in this subject is of course confined, primarily at least, to the topics that may usefully figure in an introduction to a history of economic analysis. Of these the problem of ideology is by far the most important and will be dealt with first (1); under a second heading we shall consider the motive forces of scientific endeavor and the mechanisms of scientific development (2); and finally we shall discuss some topics concerning the personnel of science in general and economics in particular (3).
