Merton, Robert King (1910–2003)

US sociologist. He undertook studies of deviance and anomie, role theory, the sociology of knowledge, and historical sociology. His book Science, Technology and Society in 17th-Century England 1938 had a considerable influence on historians of science.

Merton continued the German sociologist Max Weber's work on the link between Protestantism and capitalism by considering the enormous amount of scientific inquiry carried out during the 17th century in terms of social and cultural change. In Social Theory and Social Structure 1951, Merton accepted that the task of sociology is to discover ‘systematic regularity’ in social phenomena, but was doubtful about grand, all-inclusive theories. Instead he preferred ‘middle-range theories’, a few careful theories explaining a limited number of phenomena.

Educated at Harvard University, where he was a pupil of Talcott Parsons, Merton taught at Columbia University, New York, where, from 1941, he co-directed the Bureau of Applied Social Research with the Austrian-born US sociologist Paul F Lazarsfeld (1901–1976).