1. In this introductory statement, adapted to the topic under discussion, we have made use of Robert K. Merton’s carefully stated qualifications, found in his study, “Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England.” See Merton, Science Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England, IV OSIRIS 360 (1938).
2. Some specific details of the present topic may be found in Wolfgang, Political Crimes and Punishments in Renaissance Florence,44 J. GRIM. L., CRIMINOLOGY & POLICE SCI. 555 (1954), and Wolfgang, Socio-Economic Factors Related to Crime and Punishment in Renaissance Florence,47 J. GRIM. L., CRIMINOLOGY & POLICE SCI. 311 (1956).
3. The idea that thought patterns are relative conditions arising out of the cultural and historical climate of a given area and time has been eloquently expressed by Louis Gottschalk. See Gottschalk, The Historian and the Historical Document,in THE USE of PERSONAL DOCUMENTS IN HISTORY, ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 3 (Soc. Sci. Res. Council Bull. No. 53, 1945). Historicism, he suggests, “insists upon the relation of ideas to historical circumstances (including other ideas); it maintains that ideas are only ‘reflex functions of the sociological conditions under which they arose.’ ” Id. at 25.
4. J. Gillin, Criminology and Penology 9(1945).
5. For a succinct discussion of the problems of historical analysis, especially problems of constructing hypotheses in a sociological study of history, see THE SOCIAL SCIENCES IN HISTORICAL STUDY: A REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON HISTORIOGRAPHY 66105 (Soc. Sci. Res. Council Bull. No. 64, 1954); Mandelbaum, History and the Social Sciences: Social Facts, in THEORIES OF HISTORY 476–88 (P. Gardiner ed. 1959).