Search

Similar in scope and significance to the industrial and agrarian revolutions, the modem scientific revolution has been slowly developing for the past century bringing changes which are both obvious and obscure. In general, scholars have analyzed this revolution in terms of two major conceptions which have emphasized either the effect of science technology or the effect of science on the social institutions and social organization of society. More recently interest has focused upon the growth of power of science and its alienating effects. But one aspect of this revolution, perhaps the most important aspect, has been almost totally ignored. This paper is devoted to an examination of this aspect the effect of science on culture. From its early beginnings, when it was at war with theology, to the postindustrial period of widespread acceptance, science has made its mark upon culture first in the production of new information and thus a "new world view" and later in the rise of "scientism" where the uncritical adoration of science has produced a new value in society-that of science itself. Because of their historical development and confinement to certain types of analytical models, sociology and the sociology of science have been unsuccessful in dealing with this type of social change. In addition to sociology's neglect of the effect of science on culture, sociologists are producing fragmented information about science and the revolution which leads to the belief that science, because of its internal value structure and utilitarian relationship to other social institutions, can not develop unchecked to a position of overwhelming power. Without any manifest intentions, sociologists have produced a conservative evaluation of science and the revolution.ceptions of the revolution; (2) the reasons for the neglect of sociological analysis of the effect of science on culture; (3) a brief overview of the replacement, destruction, and accommodation theories of the effect of science on culture; and (4) the change from atomistic accommodation during the preindustrial period, when science was at war with theology, to the holistic accommodation of science in the rise of scientism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A genuinely sociological theory of social change is lacking, but the literature of the social sciences abounds with the elements of such a theory. The present paper deals with one of these elements, namely the change from tribalism to urbanism as a major instance of social change. For this purpose the concepts of culture and civilization are examined, and a plea is made to restore the concept of civilization to its rightful place in the vocabulary of sociologists and anthropologists. In doing this, the intention is not to reduce social change to the process of urbanization, but rather to isolate the sociological element which makes for social change within the supersession of a familial by a territorial society, wherever it occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is a sociological commonplace to note that urban-industrial societies, regardless of differences in antecedent culture or in details of national history, tend to develop essentially similar social structures, and to undergo change in similar directions as a consequence of the working out of the same general processes in their specific socio-cultural settings. At the same time these specific socio-cultural differences--along with differences in resources, population societal scale and the like--produce larger or smaller differences in the detailed configuration of the basically similar structures in different societies or even within the same society from region to region, or at different points in time. Discovering the exact nature of these similarities and differences is the primary task of a comparative sociology of urban-industrial societies. But the identification of universal features common to all urban-industrial societies, and of less general features peculiar to a particular nation or a distinct stage in a process of change, requires the development of new methods of systematic comparative analysis. This paper proposes one such method, suitable for application to a limited, but important, phase of the problem: the comparative study of patterns of ecological differentiation among the residential sub-areas of urban communities.