Sociology of science in the context of "Scientific field"

The Merton thesis is an argument about the nature of early experimental science proposed by Robert K. Merton. Similar to Max Weber's famous claim on the link between Protestant work ethic and the capitalist economy, Merton argued for a similar positive correlation between the rise of Protestant Pietism and early experimental science. The Merton thesis has resulted in continuous debates.

Although scholars are still debating it, Merton's 1936 doctoral dissertation (and two years later his first monograph by the same title) Science, Technology and Society in 17th-Century England raised important issues on the connections between religion and the rise of modern science, became a significant work in the realm of the sociology of science and continues to be cited in new scholarship. Merton further developed this thesis in other publications.

Scientometrics is a subfield of informetrics that studies quantitative aspects of scholarly literature. Major research issues include the measurement of the impact of research papers and academic journals, the understanding of scientific citations, and the use of such measurements in policy and management contexts.

In practice there is a substantial overlap between scientometrics and other scientific fields such as information systems, information science, science of science policy, sociology of science, and metascience. Critics have argued that overreliance on scientometrics has created a system of perverse incentives, producing a publish or perish environment that leads to low-quality research.

Ludwik Fleck (Polish pronunciation: [lud.vik flɛk], Hebrew: לודוויק פלק; 11 July 1896 – 5 June 1961) was a Polish, Jewish, and Israeli physician and biologist who did important work in epidemic typhus in Lwów, Poland, with Rudolf Weigl and in the 1930s developed the concepts of "Denkstil" ("thought style") and "Denkkollektiv" ("thought collective").

Fleck's concept of "thought collective" is important in the philosophy of science and in logology (the "science of science"), helping explain how scientific ideas change over time, much as in Thomas Kuhn's later notion of "paradigm shift" (on Fleck's possible influence on Kuhn, see Jarnicki and Greif) and in Michel Foucault's concept of "episteme".

A knowledge production mode is a term from the sociology of science which refers to the way (scientific) knowledge is produced. So far, three modes have been conceptualized. Mode 1 production of knowledge is knowledge production motivated by scientific knowledge alone (basic research) which is not primarily concerned by the applicability of its findings. Mode 1 is founded on a conceptualization of science as separated into discrete disciplines (e.g., a biologist does not bother about chemistry). Mode 2 was coined in 1994 in juxtaposition to Mode 1 by Michael Gibbons, Camille Limoges, Helga Nowotny, Simon Schwartzman, Peter Scott and Martin Trow. In Mode 2, multidisciplinary teams are brought together for short periods of time to work on specific problems in the real world for knowledge production (applied research) in the knowledge society. Mode 2 can be explained by the way research funds are distributed among scientists and how scientists focus on obtaining these funds in terms of five basic features: knowledge produced in the context of application; transdisciplinarity; heterogeneity and organizational diversity; social accountability and reflexivity; and quality control. Subsequently, Carayannis and Campbell described a Mode 3 knowledge in 2006.