Robert K. Merton Quotes

Thus, in general, in the first instance, the direction of interest in empirical fact will be canalised by the logical structure of the theoretical system.

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

What's nice about experiments is that they are much more closely tied to what theorists think about the world than normal empirical research. You can design your experiment to exactly ask the question you want to ask. This is not true about normal empirical research.

Theory is needed to tell you where to look.

It is impossible to devise an experiment without a preconceived idea; devising an experiment, we said, is putting a question; we never conceive a question without an idea which invites an answer. I consider it, therefore, an absolute principle that experiments must always be devised in view of a preconceived idea, no matter if the idea be not very clear nor very well defined.

Natural science is founded on minute critical views of the general order of events taking place upon our globe, corrected, enlarged, or exalted by experiments, in which the agents concerned are placed under new circumstances, and their diversified properties separately examined. The body of natural science, then, consists of facts; is analogy,-the relation of resemblance of facts by which its different parts are connected, arranged, and employed, either for popular use, or for new speculative improvements.

as an economics professor I am by nature inclined to the view that the truth isn't out there, it's in here - that usually you learn a lot more by thinking really hard about the data than you do by sniffing around for supposedly inside information.

Whatever sociology may be, it is the result of constantly asking the question, what is the meaning of this?

If it turns out that we're doing proper science from time to time, it just happens to be that that's the most efficient way of doing it. We go into each of these stories with an open mind, and one of the great things about how the show works is that we're not approaching it from a doctoral point of view, we're just trying to see what happens.

There's science and there's science, is all I'm saying. Where humans are the subjects, it's mostly not science

Theories without facts may be barren, but facts without theories are meaningless.

What Copernicus really achieved was not the discovery of a true theory but of a fertile new point of view.

This view, as a rounded whole and in all its essential elements, has very recently disappeared from science. It died a royal death with Agassiz.

The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

Resist the temptation to compare yourself to others. This is crucial in order to be able to manifest whatever you want.

Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point of view when they make us acquainted with the law of a series of uniformly recurring phenomena, or, it may be, only give a negative result showing an incompleteness in our knowledge of such a law, till then held to be perfect.

The triumph of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent.

An historian should yield himself to his subject, become immersed in the place and period of his choice, standing apart from it now and then for a fresh view.

It is wiser, I believe, to arrive at theory by way of evidence rather than the other way around.... It is more rewarding, in any case, to assemble the facts first and, in the process of arranging them in narrative form, to discover a theory or a historical generalization emerging of its own accord.

There is nothing so practical as a good theory.

Science attempts to figure out laws and then uses it later. While the work of art reflects the cosmic order without asking for an explanation

Once I decide to take on a role it's because I find that guy to be really interesting to watch and very compelling to play. And from that point on I can no longer judge him. I can only take on his point of view in order to play him effectively. And his point of view is often not mine.

A work in which there are theories is like an object which still has the ticket that shows its price.

Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses.

Political economy has only become a science since it has been confined to the results of inductive investigation.