Social Background of Scientists and Their Scientific Occupations in Early Modern Europe

This paper is devoted to studying the social conditions of scientific occupations in Early Modern Europe during the Scientific revolution in XVI-XVII centuries. Two key research questions are outlined: 1) how the scientific occupations are interconnected, and 2) how the scientific occupations are associated with socio-economic characteristics of scientists? On the basis of biographical data of 630 Early Modern scientists the social network analysis and mathematical-statistical analysis are applied. The socio-economic factors that can be possibly connected with scientific occupations are the following: country of origin of the scientist, the period of life, the financial status of the family, religion, level of education, university, country of study, father occupations, participation in scientific societies, scientific societies, means of support and patronage. With the social characteristics of scientists on the basis of the scientist’s country of birth and period of life a new variable of the level of economic development of the country is created and also checked for the significant relations with scientific occupations. In the result of the analysis, all outlined hypotheses claimed at the presence of non-random relationships were confirmed with the exception of financial status of the scientist’s family that failed to have significant connection to scientific occupations. All detailed calculations and possible explanations of observed relationships are presented in paper. In addition, the paper presents the temporal dynamics of scientific occupations that has been made on the basis of scientists’ period of life, and formulates two hypotheses seeking to explain the observed patterns. Key words: social conditions of scientific occupations, Scientific revolution, Early Modern Europe