| This dissertation is the first study about the scientific elite in China--members (yuanshi) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Using Mertonian sociology of science in general, and the norm of universalism and theory of social stratification in science in particular, the dissertation examines the influence of such factors as social origin, influence of mentors on students, types of research in which scientists have been involved, political attitude, among others, on the recruitment of Chinese scientists into the honorific society. It also looks at the impact of major historical changes on the development of Chinese science, and on the formation of the Chinese scientific elite.;On the basis of the evidence found from the dissertation, a tentative conclusion could be drawn: The formation of the Chinese scientific elite has followed a similar pattern as discovered by Zuckerman on her research on the American scientific elite (1977). But the contribution of the dissertation is not just confined in confirming Zuckerman's findings in the Western context. Since the universalistic hypothesis of scientific elite formation was originally shown to exist in a democratic, or "liberal," social system, and since the findings from China, a non-democratic, or authoritarian, society are not only similar to what has been from in the West, but also quite consistent historically in spite of the tremendous social and political changes that China has experienced, it might be suggested that the recognition and promotion of scientists are quite independent of political, cultural and historical fluctuations, which is further related to the question of the compatibility of various political structures and the culture of science.;The dissertation has been benefited by the efforts of systematic collection and organization of data on the Chinese scientific elite. In addition, it also represents the first attempt to employ interviews with a group of Chinese elite scientists as an important data source for a sociological study. |
