A Study On Derek John De Solla Price's Academic Thoughts

Derek John de Solla Price was a famous historian of science,the father of scientometrics and a famous scientist of science of science in twentieth Century.Some scholars have paid attention to Price's academic thoughts mainly from the perspective of scientometrics,but failed to carry out a comprehensive study due to the lack of materials.The doctoral dissertation aimed at an exhaustive study based on the previous achievements and the newly files of Price by literature survey and quantitative study.Based on analysis and investigation,the author discussed the reason why Price went on the the way to the academic field,and why he turned from the subject of metallurgical physics to the history of science(scientific instruments),science of science and science policy studies.Price's academic thoughts can be divided into six themes:metallurgical physics,scientific instrument research,quantitative study on history of science,science of science,sociology of science and science policy studies,and can be divided into three periods:the germination period of the thoughts,the dominant period of method study and the extending period of applied study on history of science.The core of Price's views lied in his general understanding about the nature of science and technology,and the main thread was a profound and thorough thinking about the relationships between the two,and norms of value covered social significances of science,scientists' social responsibilities and value judgments.The law of exponential growth of science was a starting point of Price's quantitative study,he inherited and developed the quantitative study method in history of science and formed"Price's three Laws".At the same time,Price used the Science Citation Index to explore the network of scientific papers of the whole world,depicting the whole picture of the development of science from the foundation to the frontier,opening the mainstream direction of citation analysis based on scientific papers.Price often used historical cases analysis and other humanities methods,Price used the ideas and methods of physics to the study of the history of science through "cross-fertilization",which can be traced back to the experience of physics in his early academic career.Price had previously cooperated with Joseph Needham on the research of Chinese Astronomical Clockwork,which gave him the chance to meet with the historian of science Zhu Kezhen from china in 1956,but thereafter he had little influence in his Chinese peers.It was the critical stage of science of science and scientometrics on the eve of reform and opening up in China,Price communicated with Chinese peers by the introduction of Qian Xue-sen.He earned great popularity because of his enthusiastic support to the development of science of science in china.Price had never been to china and his thoughts spread mainly by the way of translations and was prone to selectively accept.Finally,the dissertation discussed the difference among Price,Bernard and Merton,discussed the ideological basis,the relevant disputes and the future of quantitative study on the history of science,the rights and wrongs of Impact Factor,and reflected the development of history of science and technology.