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This paper was presented at a conference on 'The Social Impact of Modern Biology', organized by the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science in London, 26-28 November 1970. It will appear in the volume of conference proceedings edited by Watson Fuller—to be published on 21 May 1971 by Routledge & Kegan Paul as The Impact of Modern Biology (hard cover £1.75, paperback £0.50)—and is reprinted by kind permission. Because of the interest it aroused at the time, and the way in which it drew on material from several academic disciplines, we are taking the unusual step of reproducing the paper here so that readers may have the advantage of the extended bibliographical and discursive footnotes, which will not be included in the conference proceedings.The paper was designed basically for an audience of scientists who were assumed to have no knowledge of recent literature on social and historical aspects of science. Dr Young is himself active within the history and philosophy of science, and is working towards a closer relationship with relevant studies in sociology and social anthropology. He makes no claim to a comprehensive knowledge of all the related background literature, nor to having provided here an exhaustive bibliography. This paper is in the nature of a report of work and thought in progress, and a provisional sketch of an emerging point of view. Discussion, criticism and elaboration of the paper's contents, in the form of Notes or Letters, will be welcomed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I would like to thank the following for advice, assistance, and material help: Mr S. B. Barnes, Dr A. P. M. Coxon, Dr D. O. Edge, and Dr T. R. Elsdale of the University of Edinburgh; Mr D. French, of Lanchester Polytechnic; Dr M. J. Mulkay of the University of Cambridge; Dr N. C. Mullins, of Indiana University.I would also like to thank those crystallographers and molecular biologists who consented to be interviewed, and those who read early drafts of this paper.The research was supported by a grant from the SSRC, and was carried out at the Science Studies Unit, University of Edinburgh, and the Department of Sociology, University of Manchester. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

I am greatly indebted to the Institute for Scientific Information for two volumes of the IDR&DS not available at the Ruhr-University, to Derek J. de Solla Price of Yale University for a critical review of this paper, to Helmut Baitsch of University of Ulm for many valuable suggestions, to Helga Niehr, Werner Ruzicka, Lothar Schneidt and Ulrich König for helping me in the counting and computing, and to Günter Keim for drawing the figures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]