Overview

"With playfulness and a large dose of wit, Robert Merton traces the origin of Newton's aphorism, ""If I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants."" Using as a model the discursive and digressive style of Sterne's Tristram Shandy, Merton presents a whimsical yet scholarly work which deals with the questions of creativity, tradition, plagiarism, the transmission of knowledge, and the concept of progress. ""This book is the delightful apotheosis of donmanship: Merton parodies scholarliness while being faultlessly scholarly; he scourges pedantry while brandishing his own abstruse learning on every page. The most recondite and obscure scholarly squabbles are transmuted into the material of comedy as the ostensible subject is shouldered to one side by yet another hobby horse from Merton's densely populated stable. He has created a jeu d'esprit which is profoundly suggestive both in detail and as a whole.""—Sean French, Times Literary Supplement"

Full Product Details

Author:   Robert K. Merton ,  Umberto Eco ,  Denis Donoghue ,  Robert K. Merton
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Edition:   Reprinted edition
Dimensions:   Width: 14.40cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 21.50cm
Weight:   0.462kg
ISBN:  

9780226520865

ISBN 10:   0226520862
Pages:   348
Publication Date:   15 May 1993
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

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Author Information

Robert K. Merton is University Professor Emeritus at Columbia University, Foundation Scholar of the Russell Sage Foundation, and a MacArthur Prize Fellow. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has received numerous honors and prizes for his work in both science and the humanities. His many books include the classic Social Theory and Social Structure, the Sociology of Science, Sociological Ambivalence, and Science, Technology, and Society in Seventeenth-Century England.

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