The puritan ethos, the newtonian absolute space and the english geography of the 18th and 19th centuries

Abstract

This article assumes that the Puritan ethic, as an expression of value and attitudes to the general ascetic Protestantism would become primarily responsible for the English scientific development in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This construction, developed by Robert K. Merton in his article Puritanism, pietism and science had as background the work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber published in 1904. On that article Merton aimed to highlight some particular characteristics of the social behavior arising from the Puritan ethos which were clearly associated to the conduct of English scientists. In our construction we aimed to draw a parallel between the reflections of Merton and the reading of the "world system" present in the structure of Newtonian science. Finally we have sought to understand how Newtonian space ended up influencing the English Geography.