Career-Making in Post-Revolutionary France: the Case of Jean-Baptiste Biot
- 1 March 1978
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in The British Journal for the History of Science
- Vol. 11 (1) , 36-48
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007087400015934
Abstract
Science is an occupation as well as an intellectual endeavour. This fact is extremely well known, but its consequences have been little explored by historians of science. Sociologists such as Merton, Hagstrom, and Storer have argued that occupational rewards motivate a scientist to publish and thereby further the intellectual ends of the scientific community. Yet, as I have shown in a recent paper, such rewards can also lead to work which is hasty, superficial, and blindly uncritical of the dominant paradigm. Thus the relationship between career motivation and genuine intellectual achievement must be regarded as problematic at best.Keywords
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