1. Robert K. Merton, The Sociology of Science, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973, p. 175.
2. One of the first authors to employ the term of a “knowledgeable society” is Robert E. Lane. He justifies his use of the concept by pointing to the growing societal relevance of scientific knowledge and defines a knowledgeable society as one in which its members “(a) inquire into the basis of their beliefs about man, nature, and society; (b) are guided (perhaps unconsciously) by objective standards of veridical truth, and, at the upper levels of education, follow scientific rules of evidence and inference in inquiry; (c) devote considerable resources to this inquiry and thus have a large store of knowledge; (d) collect, organize, and interpret their knowledge in a constant effort to extract further meaning from it for the purposes at hand; (e) employ this knowledge to illuminate (and perhaps modify) their values and goals as well as to advance them.” Robert E. Lane, The Decline of Politics and Ideology in a Knowledgeable Society’, American Sociological Review 31 (1966) 650.
3. Cf. Norbert Elias, ‘The Sciences: Towards a Theory’, in Richard Whitley (ed.), Social Processes of Scientific Development, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, pp. 21–42.
4. 3. Cf. Bronislaw Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion, Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1955
5. 4. Fritz Machlup, The Production and Distribution of Knowledge in the United States, Princeton: Princeton Unversity Press, 1962.