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From the names of cruise lines and bookstores to an Australian ranch and a nudist camp outside of Atlanta, the wordserendipity--that happy blend of wisdom and luck by which something is discovered not quite by accident--is today ubiquitous. This book traces the word's eventful history from its 1754 coinage into the twentieth century--chronicling along the way much of what we now call the natural and social sciences. The book charts where the term went, with whom it resided, and how it fared. We cross oceans and academic specialties and meet those people, both famous and now obscure, who have used and abusedserendipity. We encounter a linguistic sage, walk down the illustrious halls of the Harvard Medical School, attend the (serendipitous) birth of penicillin, and meet someone who \"manages serendipity\" for the U.S. Navy. The story ofserendipityis fascinating; that ofThe Travels and Adventures of Serendipity, equally so. Written in the 1950s by already-eminent sociologist Robert Merton and Elinor Barber, the book--though occasionally and most tantalizingly cited--was intentionally never published. This is all the more curious because it so remarkably anticipated subsequent battles over research and funding--many of which centered on the role of serendipity in science. Finally, shortly after his ninety-first birthday, following Barber's death and preceding his own by but a little, Merton agreed to expand and publish this major work. Beautifully written, the book is permeated by the prodigious intellectual curiosity and generosity that characterized Merton's influentialOn the Shoulders of Giants. Absolutely entertaining as the history of a word, the book is also tremendously important to all who value the miracle of intellectual discovery. It represents Merton's lifelong protest against that rhetoric of science that defines discovery as anything other than a messy blend of inspiration, perspiration, error, and happy chance--anything other than serendipity.

An epistolary episode in the sociointellectual history of the so-called \"Thomas theorem\" is discussed. The episode provides a strategic research site for examining certain substantive and methodological problems in the sociology of science.

El estudio conjunto de la sociología del conocimiento y de la sociología de la opinión pública y la comunicación colectiva de ninguna manera es accidental. Porque, aun cuando ambas se han desarrollado en gran par­te, independientemente, se pretende sugerir aquí que el cultivo verdadero de cada una se facilitaría mediante la consolidación de algunas de sus concepciones teóricas, métodos de investigación y hallazgos empíricos.

A discussion of the intellectual & historical continuities & discontinuities between the focused interview, as it was developed in the 1940s & 1950s, & the technique of focus groups, as it has emerged on a growing scale during the last decade or so. Presented as a brief case study in the diffusion of knowledge from the sociocultural world of academe to that of commerce, this quasibiographical account is based largely on archival materials. 23 References. Modified AA

This text is the first known published work of North American sociologist Robert K. Merton. As a twenty four years old sociology student at Harvard under Pitirim Sorokin and young Talcott Parsons guidance, the article was printed in known Social Forces magazine. The essay recalls the 1920's French sociology that followed Emile Durkheim's death (1858-1917) as the \"recent sociology\". His work studies the topics, discussions, methods and different focus of the various \"schools\" of the time: Durkheim's followers, those opposing them, Catholics and Le Play's followers. With this early French sociology work, began the shaping of the great theoretical American sociologist that led North American sociology for half a century. Adapted from the source document.

The theory of differential association holds that individuals learn to engage in criminal behavior by associating with others. The theory of anomie-and-opportunity suggests that rates of various forms of deviant behavior are high in a society that highly values economic success and upward mobility for all its members, even though many can never achieve this success.

La fuente de la vida social es, según Durkheim, la similitud de las consciencias y la división del trabajo. La primera es más evidente entre las sociedades primitivas, en las que la \"solidaridad mecánica\", puesta de manifiesto por la ley represiva, prevalece. La segunda es propia de las sociedades avanzadas, en las que se manifiesta una mayor \"densidad dinámica\" y en las que las reglas jurídicas definen la naturaleza y las relaciones de las funciones. Al combatir el individualismo y basar la existencia de las sociedades sobre el \"consenso de las partes\", Durkheim refuta su énfasis positivista que niega la relevancia de los fines en el estudio científico de la sociedad. En su discusión de los fines sociales hay una tendencia antimecanicista latente. La teoría del desarrollo unilineal está basada sobre datos etnográficos deficientes. Asume la ausencia de división del trabajo entre las sociedades primitivas, así como la de la \"solidaridad mecánica\" entre las sociedades modernas. Las leyes represivas y restitutivas se usan como índices de la solidaridad mecánica y orgánica, pero Durkheim no establece con ninguna precisión las perfectas relaciones que él da por sentadas entre sus tipos de solidaridad y de leyes.