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Just as some historians have attributed doctrines of Calvinism or the Protestant work ethic in overturning the traditional religious stigma with the theodicy of wealth, salvation earned through diligence and work, instead of accumulation of fortune as a mark of avarice and sin; the pursuit of money and commerce as religious grace made manifest - so too the unspoken faith in the Mertonian virtues within the foundations of Western science - analogous to the theory of Protestantism and Calvinist / Reformation values as an ideological enablement of capital accumulation, trade, commerce and industrial development, the Mertonian norms of science are deeply embedded in all institutions of Western academic research, analysis, investigation and review of findings. Within the Royal Society, one of the oldest surviving scientific institutions, 7 of the 10 founding members were Puritans, and their unspoken ideological notions endure beyond the reach of centuries.
These Mertonian virtues underpin the institutions of science:
-Communism (communalism?)
That all scientists possess common ownership of scientific goods and intellectual property, to promote collective collaboration for common benefit; secrecy violates this norm
-Universalism
Scientific validity is independent of the sociopolitical status / personal attributes of its participants
-Disinterestedness
Scientific institutions act for the benefit of common scientific enterprise, as opposed to personal gain of any individual participant
-Scepticism
Scientific claims should be exposed to question and critical scrutiny before acceptance, both in methodology and institutional conduct
All of these Mertonian notions of scientific virtue are to a great extent in tension and paradox with each other - for instance, the establishment of any scientific institution to oversee the conduct of its own members is itself a means of elevating and exalting the erudtion of one scientist over another. And the progress of science is rarely inhibited by the physical limits of human comprehension, being constrained first by the funding of science - the science that is "valued" by society is the science that advances and gets done.
