Search

Classical analyses of differences among the sciences has measured social but not cognitive structure. This paper suggests a method for describing differences among fields in the processes of knowledge growth. The method examines closely what is said about a particular scientific paper when it is cited in later works, and traces changes over time, if they occur. A comparative analysis of cases drawn from neuropharmacology and the sociology of science is used to illustrate the approach. The two papers analyzed shown strong differences in the level of generality at which the contents of the original papers are cited. Lack of change over time in how the sociology of science paper is cited is attributed to the lack of attention to its main empirical knowledge claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers interested in the structure of scientific fields have documented increases in specialization and collaboration. How, if at all, are these two trends related? Is specialization so severe that scholars cannot collaborate unless they share specific research interests? Or, have specializing tendencies promoted research that joins specialty areas and broaches new topics? We answer these important questions for a single discipline, sociology, using both qualitative interviews and latent profile analysis. We empirically identify three collaborative styles that depend on both the areas and extent of specialization in coauthors' research programs. The prominence of the reinforcing generalist profile suggests that specialization in science mainly serves to encourage scholars to work with others in their specialty area. However, the existence of two other styles - a more complementary one and one that is characterized by migration into new intellectual terrain - suggests that subfields within sociology are permeable enough to permit boundary-spanning, original research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article demonstrates that the highly cited documents which clustered together were significant documents according to specialists. The succession of cluster maps suggested that the specialty had undergone a rather radical shift in research focus. In this regard too, the data reflected accurately the perceptions of the specialists. The citations provided, in effect, a physical and measurable manifestation of a collective mental switch from a static to a dynamic conception of collagen. Several specialists interviewed stressed the close knit character of their specialty, a few major centers of research, a small number of leading researchers and a high level of informal communications among researchers. There seems to be little doubt that the co-citation clusterin methodology has identified, at least in this case, a research specialty with all the characteristics ascribed to "invisible colleges." On the other hand, the collagen specialty differs in one important respect. There is no evidence in collagen of a self-conscious or deliberate revolutionary program being carried out by a group of researchers when the specialty underwent its conceptual shift in the early 1970's.

This paper is reminiscence and a critique of Robert K. Merton's work in the sociology of science. The author got to know Merton very well as he served as his student assistant, and colleague for 15 years from 1960. Merton's works which are most discussed are his doctoral dissertation on Puritanism and science, his paper on scientific norms, and his paper 'The Matthew Effect'. He is criticized for not generalizing far enough from his work on the Puritan thesis and for not paying close enough attention to the empirical data, which cast doubt on the validity of his theory of the Matthew Effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides some information about British organization Study Group and its activities since its formal inception at the 1969 Easter BSA conference. At that time sociology of science was not really firmly established as a distinct sub-area of sociology and most people interested in it were primarily either sociologists of organizations and of education or connected with then growing "science of science" area. Papers presented at recent meetings of the group reflects a wide range of interests. Most papers profounded that a sociology of scientific knowledge is possible and the theoretical and epistemological implications of this view have been extensively discussed. A major means of demarcating this area from others has been the emphasis on theoretical aspects of understanding scientific knowledge. Some papers were concerned with issues in the sociology of knowledge and the philosophy of science, as well as with general questions of sociological theory. Science is perceived more as one part of the cultural system rather than as entity separate from society.

This article presents reply of the author to his critics. In this article, he expresses gratitude to David Bloor and Wes Sharrock for their lengthy responses to his article "Rule-Scepticism and the Sociology of Knowledge." According to the author, he has said a little about philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in his paper. In his reply, Bloor speaks of "Wittgenstein's reductive approach to meaning" and aligns Wittgenstein with his own reductionist ambitions. Whether Bloor's move is defensible depends on what the author means by "reductionism" or "reductive approach." Bloor is surprised that the author finds his position vis-a-vis reductionism ambiguous. In order to make sense of his assessment, he assumes that he must, have ignored "half of the theory" that he puts forward in his article, "Wittgenstein: Rules and Institutions." The author agrees with Bloor that Barry Barnes' work on designation devices is of great interest. Bloor's discussion of Barnes' theory displays precisely the ambiguity that the author was worried about in his paper. According to Bloor, Barnes' paper shows that a structure of non-intentional processes can provide the underpinning and matrix for sustaining intentional processes and which derive their intentionality from it.

This article presents the response of Noretta Koertge to the recent discussion in the journal of the book she edited. She describes features of scientific method and explains that scientists devote much of their energies to trying to exclude their own biases from their observations, and she lists the familiar techniques that are used to accomplish a degree of what is commonly called objectivity. It is noted that those who work in the history and sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) not only know scientific method and its aspirations, they value and cleave to it. Thus, SSK tries to generalize so that its results can be repeated in other settings, historical details are checked with respondents and, where possible, sources are carefully documented so that they can be checked by others.

This paper represents a preliminary attempt to bring the field of mathematics within the scope of the sociology of science. An analysis is performed to determine whether citations are a rough measure of quality in mathematics. Citations to work published by mathematicians who have been elected to the US National Academy of Sciences are compared with those to the work of a random sample of university-based American mathematicians. The study examines productivity and citation counts, to determine if there is a relationship between a mathematician's age and achievement, and to test the claim that younger mathematicians are more apt to do important work. Finally, this paper explores the difficulties peculiar to the sociological study of mathematics, which account for the reluctance of most sociologists of science to study this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The priority dispute between Raymond Damadian and Paul Lauterbur over the ‘invention’ of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has attracted the attention of social and natural scientists for more than 30 years. In this paper, I have used this priority dispute to analyze the complex socio-epistemic processes through which a claim for an invention is made and strengthened. I argue that a tension exists because techno-scientific practices are embedded within a particular disciplinary regime of authorship: even though techno-scientific practices occur through distributed cognition and are contingent upon particular socio-epistemic contexts, a claim for an invention requires assigning authorship to a particular person, company, or institution in order to clearly define the origin and the novelty of that particular techno-scientific event. Nevertheless, the outcomes of socio-epistemic practices for making and strengthening priority claims are shifting, open-ended, and contingent upon particular socio-epistemic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a brief response to the replies by Vicky Singleton and Brian Wynne. The author will base what he has to say on the original papers and his response to them, take account of the replies by Singleton and Wynne, and summarizes his main conclusions from the exchange. The two replies to the author's original response to the Special Issue of Social Studies of Science on "The Politics of SSK" carry on the debate in rather different ways. Hence, the author discusses them separately in this paper.

Previous studies in the sociology of science have relied on measure of production and citations which have failed to take account of multiple authorship. This study indicated that these previous (and still currently used) measures introduce intolerable erro0r and often profoundly influence substantive interpretation. To address the problem of multiple authorship in the measurement of publications and citations, a revision of current indices is presented. Previous measurement error may well require a re-analysis and rethinking of previous reported studies in the sociology of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper gives a characterization of distributed cognition (d-cog) and explores ways that the framework might be applied in studies of science. I argue that a system can only be given a d-cog description if it is thought of as performing a task. Turning our attention to science, we can try to give a global d-cog account of science or local d-cog accounts of particular scientific projects. Several accounts of science can be seen as global d-cog accounts: Robert Merton's sociology of scientific norms, Philip Kitcher's 20th-century account of cognitive labor, and Kitcher's 21st-century notion of well-ordered science. Problems that arise for them arise just because of the way that they attribute a function to science. The paper concludes by considering local d-cog accounts. Here, too, the task is the crux of the matter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much debate has taken place in science and technology studies (S&TS) regarding how to speak about the capacities of technology. Alternative approaches are bound up with questions over the merits of realist and relativist accounts of technology and their potential for analytical insight and practical engagement. This paper advances a basis for examining the link between politics and artefacts, one that draws on but reconfigures the work of post-essentialist authors. This is done by moving away from attempts to detail the social basis of technology to consider instead where the ambiguities associated with technology are resolved. These issues are examined through the case of a (re-)emerging class of devices called 'non-lethal' weapons and, in particular, the chemical incapacitant spray used by British police forces. In doing so, this paper reframes debates in technology studies over how far it is possible and desirable to pursue relativist lines of inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Constructivism's founding assumptions are being questioned by its proponents and opponents in a quest for alternatives to, or refined forms of, that theoretical approach. This paper suggests that such questioning may indicate that science and technology studies (S&TS) is ready to reconsider another approach based on Heideggerian phenomenology. Some innovators and innovation scholars appear ready to move on to this alternative approach to knowledge. They seem to have opened to the Heideggerian alternative by confronting the practical inadequacies of orthodox science and engineering. This paper suggests that S&TS is facing a similar confrontation with the inadequacies of constructivism's founding assumptions. The alternative approach explored involves a partnership with 'Being' that decentres the subject, but without resorting to heterogeneous agency or to realism. This partnership is based on understanding the implications of the interplay between 'Being' granting and withholding knowledge. This paper suggests that S&TS may now be ready to look at this interplay as an alternative to people constructing knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The sociological study of boundary-work and the political-economic approach of principal-agent theory can be complementary ways of examining the relationship between society and science: boundary-work provides the empirical nuance to the principal-agent scheme, and principal-agent theory provides structure to the thick boundary description. This paper motivates this complementarity to examine domestic technology transfer in the USA from the intramural laboratories of the US National Institutes of Health (NIH). It casts US policy for technology transfer in the principal-agent framework, in which politicians attempt to manage the moral hazard of the productivity of research by providing specific incentives to the agents for engaging in measurable research-based innovation. Such incentives alter the previously negotiated boundary between politics and science. The paper identifies the crucial rôle of the NIH Office of Technology Transfer (OTT) as a boundary organization, which mediates the new boundary negotiations in its routine work, and stabilizes the boundary by performing successfully as an agent for both politicians and scientists. The paper hypothesizes that boundary organizations like OTT are general phenomena at the boundary between politics and science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a reply to Hans Radder's response to the author's paper. Radder has carefully identified several points which invite clarification and elaboration. It is noted that Radder clearly situates the author as recommending that science and technology studies (STS) accounts should stick to descriptive analyses. Radder acknowledges that neutrality is an illusion and that taking sides can be politically and theoretically problematic, as well as being too narrow an approach for STS. The author's paper suggests that issues surrounding neutrality versus commitment and issues surrounding descriptive versus normative approaches are inextricably linked. However, Radder is able to separate these issues, as his stated aim is to deal only with the descriptive/normative issue which is for him, the neutrality/commitment issue had been dealt with adequately in this Special Issue.

This paper describes a recent series of experimental tests of Quantum Mechanics, and examines the way in which various knowledge-claims were evaluated. In each case, It is argued that an agreed evaluation was only possible because of the shared culture of the physicists involved. The concept of plausibility is introduced as a way of characterizing the role of the social and cultural context in the evaluation of knowledge. This concept may be used in clarifying the relationship between relativism and empiricism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In blockmodeling and co-citation analysis recent studies of scientific specialties and research areas have hit upon two new quantitative methods of investigating the cognitive and social structure of science. After examining the assumptions upon which these techniques are based and the objections that have been leveled against them, this paper discusses the potential for linking the two methods in order to provide a descriptive foundation for the construction of a sociology of scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In recent decades, large-scale product liability litigation, so-called 'mass torts', have become increasingly visible on the US legal and political landscape. Invariably, mass tort litigation incorporates a range of specialist scientific knowledges. Drawing upon fairly conventional images of law and science, most judges and legal commentators attribute the apparent difficulties encountered in addressing the refractory issues involved with scientific evidence in mass torts to uncertainties, jury incomprehension, partisan scientists and the distortion of evidence caused by the adversarial legal system ('sociologies of error'). Adopting a more symmetrical social constructivist approach to scientific evidence, this paper endeavours to account for some of the complexities in the litigation surrounding the anti-nausea drug Bendectin. Rather than interpret the Bendectin litigation as an instance of the judges eventually valuing the scientific evidence properly, and thus resolving the controversy (the truth winning out), this paper explores the manner in which lawyers, scientists and judges together 'negotiated' a series of cases and judgments which privileged epidemiology as a means of 'resolving' a recurrent socio-legal 'problem'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we characterize an individual creator 'in vivo' - or, to use a more traditional category in philosophy, a knowing subject 'in the making'? While informed by philosophical modes of questioning, this paper addresses this problem using tools developed by anthropologists and sociologists of science. Based on two case studies - William X, a researcher working at France's largest petroleum company (Elf Aquitaine), and Stephen Hawking - the paper examines how these scientists came to distinguish themselves as creative geniuses. By breaking down the narrative representation of the creative process as a simple mental operation, the paper shows how creation is materially 'distributed' in specific tools, practices and social networks. Conversely, it demonstrates how and why the distribution of competences into heterogeneous practices provides an explanation of how a person becomes a singular, inventive individual. In conclusion, it proposes a new conceptualization of the knowing subject as the distributed-centred subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peripheral countries are at a disadvantage with respect to the construction of scientific knowledge, which is mostly carried out by a small number of traditional core loci countries. However, in a few cases, groups of scientists are able to break through exclusion barriers. Sometimes they tackle relevant issues, share values and procedures with core loci representatives, and take part in heated controversies: in short, they participate in the construction of legitimate science. These scientists form 'centres of excellence' in scientifically marginal countries. In this paper, contextual conditions involving the emergence, establishment and decline of such enterprises are discussed, on the basis of examples drawn from the history of Chagas disease (Cd). In this history, we see a major discovery established, deconstructed and re-established. Quantitative analyses of publications on Cd over 70 years show the relation between the choice of different types of journals and methodological approaches, and the legitimation strategies adopted by different groups of practitioners. It also shows the outcomes of such strategies in terms of production concentration, emergence of new authors and growth of institutional work. This story shows that it is important for the pioneers to establish a different intellectual culture in their local environment. Unless they do so, and gain its acceptance among their immediate colleagues, the enterprise cannot preserve its status as a centre of excellence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The importance of infrastructural work for the mobility of practices and for the capacity of centers to act on distant sites is stressed in both science studies and the sociology of state formation. Employing Kula's typology of metrological systems, this paper examines four areas of metrological reform in pre-Confederation Canada, stressing the existence of metrological hybrids. Metrological standardization is held to depend upon the exercise of sovereign state power at the same time as it extends the administrative capacity of state agencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of neutrality versus commitment within the sociology of scientific knowledge was the direct cause of the Special Issue of the journal "Social Studies of Science." The set of papers as a whole embraces many aspects of the theme under discussion. In this brief Response, the author will focus on two central questions. The first is whether science and technology studies (STS) accounts should stick to descriptive analyses of the politics of science and technology, or whether they should also engage in normative criticisms, assessments or recommendations. It is concluded that a certain type of STS normativity is legitimate, and may constitute a specific contribution to political debates on science and technology. The second question concerns the realism-relativism issue. It is argued that this issue continues to integrate descriptively adequate and normatively engaged accounts of science and technology.

Divisions between variable oriented and person-oriented approaches in social and behavioral research are newly drawn. Yet few person oriented approaches have been fully articulated; those that have are predominantly quantitative This work presents an argument for a qualitative, person oriented study of careers; an approach identified as careers in context Based on a national study of scientists, this contextualist approach is grounded by three interacting, but analytically distinct, emphases to suggest how careers can be studied in and beyond science: (1) an emphasis on time and place as under-utilized dimensions on which to direct further study of careers; (2) an emphasis on the subjective career as a concept that qualitatively encapsulates temporal and spatial dimensions; and (3) an emphasis on career study in life course perspective. Subjectively (and objectively), careers are, of course, not static. By situating subjective careers in the times and places in which they occur, we are drawn to how those careers ‘play out’ over the course of the lives of the people leading them. This paper concludes by stressing ways in which contextual studies of careers in and beyond science will advance our understanding in five larger domains of social process: identity construction; institution building; social psychological differentiation; job satisfaction; and mystification of work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We focus, in this paper, using in-depth auto/biographical research, on a Sure Start project in a marginalized community, seeking to understand its impact and meaning through the stories of families. Programmes like Sure Start represent contested space: they may be seen as an exercise in social control in relation to the marginal other. But diverse objectives, values and people shape such programmes and the resources they offer can be experienced in different ways. We provide three narratives from parents who were initially deeply suspicious – in a community where public interventions tend to be treated with caution – and yet found meaningful support with difficult problems. The narratives also reveal the potential of Sure Start to create transactional space for popular involvement in planning and running public services. We interviewed diverse professionals about these processes and suggest that an auto/biological imagination lies at the heart of effective professional practice as well as research. We are reminded, in the process, of a shared and fundamental human need to be loved and cared for, particularly at times of distress. There is much to learn from such a project, but progress remains fragile and the lessons, for public policy, are easily lost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT In this paper we investigate the intricacies of an admirable water pumping device - the Zimbabwe Bush Pump 'B' type - so as to find out what makes it an 'appropriate technology'. This turns out to be what we call the 'fluidity' of the pump (of its boundaries, or of its working order, and of its maker). We find that in travelling to intractable places, an object that isn't too rigorously bounded, that doesn't impose itself but tries to serve, that is adaptable, flexible and responsive - in short, a fluid object - may well prove to be stronger than one which is firm. By analyzing the success and failure of this device, its agency and the way in which it shapes new configurations in the Zimbabwean socio-technical landscape, we partake in the current move in science and technology studies to transform what it means to be an actor. And by mobilizing the term love for articulating our relation to the Bush Pump, we try to contribute to shaping novel ways of 'doing' normativity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successful testing depends upon projecting from a test situation to the performance of a technology under working conditions. Some have argued that projection is made possible primarily through a collective agreement that the test circumstances and working conditions are similar in crucial ways. This paper argues that projection is better understood in many cases as a set of local practices through which testing produces change in a wider context of technology use. In the earthquake-engineering laboratory described here, this connection depends upon the circulation of skilled people, material objects and symbolic representations across distinct work settings, in such a way as to construct a continuous 'chain of practices' between the laboratory and the worlds of construction, academia and design engineering. This analysis highlights the importance of the division of labour in shaping technical practice both inside and outside the laboratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the debate over the relationship between SSK and politics by exploring the implications of 'the reflexive turn' during the 1980s. However, it does this by looking outward, at the ways in which a reflexive SSK can potentially help enlighten the culture of political issues, rather than inwards, at the methods and forms of SSK itself. The key element of this strategy is to sustain an analytical vocabulary which problematizes the human subject, whether as author of SSK work, or of public policies and public policy knowledges. I take it for granted that this cannot be fully achieved, but it remains a key principle. Reconsidering the 'Capturing' debate, the paper notes several unfortunate features held in common (and uncritically reinforced) by both 'sides' to that agenda. These include the reification of 'sides' and (more generally) of social actors (and thus of the issues at stake); and the reproduction of an implicit model of society as constituted exhaustively by active choices and decisions - thus neglecting the cultural dimensions of social (including cognitive) life. Using examples drawn from environmental opposition to nuclear power, and the construction of scientific and policy knowledge about global climate change, I argue that problematizing the identities and interests of actors within our own sociological knowledge forum, as is achieved through the reflexive turn' and extending this to the construction and deployment of knowledge in public issues, allows a much richer, more contingent and more multivalent understanding of what is at stake in any 'given' issue to come into view. This may appear to undermine the basis of policy bodies' authority - except that their authority is, I suggest already failing precisely because they cannot recognize the contingencies in the knowledges on which they rely. Refusing to enter public controversies with scientific or technical content as either partisans or disengaged neutrals, and eschewing false debates about epistemic probity, SSK(scholars can nevertheless offer intellectual resources with which to encourage institutional reflexivity, and to rebuild a democratic culture of public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes the form of a double text which simultaneously investigates the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) through citation analysis, and investigates citation analysis using theoretical ideas from SSK and Foucault. One strand of the text performs an analysis of citation patterns in SSK. This text identifies the figures who have had the most impact through their articles and books, and examines the possible effects of cultural and linguistic bias. It also investigates the impact of SSK outside the field, asks whether this impact has changed over time, and identifies researchers who have had a particularly high impact outside SSK. The other strand takes citation analysis, as exemplified in the citation study of SSK, as its topic. This text focuses on the way the citation analysis constitutes its field of study, and on the way a citation is produced as a separable, countable category. It notes the 'realistic' idea of science categories which is deployed, and the individualistic model of scientific activity. It questions the involvement of citation analysis with power, both in the traditional sense of institutional control of science through funding changes, and in the Foucaldian sense of scientists adopting citation counting as a regime of self-regulation. The paper ends with a dialogue between the 'authors' on/in these issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes an interpretive framework for understanding the cognitive or mental processes of inventors, and applies this framework to narrating how Thomas Edison developed the kinetoscope, or motion picture. A review of recent developments in the history of technology and cognitive science suggests the need for better conceptual categories for understanding and comparing how inventors approach problems. We show how Edison created a mental model of the kinetoscope from his existing phonograph, and how his assistant William K. L. Dickson (who is often credited with inventing the kinetoscope) developed his own alternative mental model. We further discuss how Edison utilized building blocks or mechanical representations from previous inventions, and what strategies or heuristics he employed, in particular, we examine how Edison divided the project between himself and Dickson. The overall result of applying our framework to this case is to provide a clearer picture of the roles played by Edison and Dickson in this invention. The paper closes with a discussion on the potential relationship between cognitive and sociological approaches to technological innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historical and sociological studies have shown that precision measurement and metrology play an important social and scientific role. This paper contrasts the dynamics of four metrological configurations. The first concerns an instrument for routine car repair. It displays the network of institutions, conventions and procedures allowing for the conservation of legal metrological precision. Such resources are not yet available during the genesis of an instrument. Very often in scientific laboratories, instruments and their metrology are elaborated simultaneously. The three other case studies analyze this construction by looking at ordinary metrological operations: the collective elaboration of standards; the translation of scientific instruments in metrological laboratories; and the intercomparison of instruments. It appears that the diversity and heterogeneity of resources associated with metrological networks result in different ways of articulating the natural and conventional character of precision measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is an empirical analysis of the way in which a group of scientists sought to maximize the attractiveness of one of their papers. It records negotiations about the title, the introduction, and the second paragraph (in which a polymer was characterized). The analysis suggests that scientists array or 'network' particulars in a way which they hope will allocate appropriate relative value to elements of that array. In doing so, three factors-the citation of colleagues, the display of facts, and problem of syntax-have to be simultaneously juggled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents author's response to a paper written by Steve Woolgar, which was based methodological difficulties of explanation in terms of interests. The author says that while such explanations are by no means unproblematic, their problems are the basis for potentially fruitful future work. Woolgar is right to call for attention to how scientists themselves do interest work. But the implication that analysts of science ought to await the result of such work before proceeding with interest explanations seems to be illogical. His presentation of the interest algorithm suggests that interest explanations appear to be empirically closed in a somewhat trivial fashion, but it does not seem to the author that his account does justice to the actual nature of these explanations. Woolgar rather dismisses the distinction between cognitive and social interests. The author disputes that social interests or cognitive interests are unenlightening theoretical terms, though, Woolgar's real objection is that they are misconceived.

The communication between distinct social worlds or forms of life is a central topic in the sociology of knowledge. How do different communities interact with each other? Based on a sociological analysis of the work of Japanese-Portuguese interpreters in the Brazilian steel industry, I argue that the ‘language barrier’, which is normally thought as a problem, can aid communication by preventing people who hold potentially clashing concepts, beliefs and customs from directly confronting each other. The importance for such people of not understanding each other is revealed in the work of interpreters, who facilitate the interaction between representatives of different steel companies and support the transfer of technology from Japan to Brazil. They maintain cordial relationships by acting as ‘buffers’ between the Japanese and Brazilian forms of life. Three ‘models of mediation’ are discussed in a comparison of the Japanese-Portuguese interpreters with other cases of interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents list of books by Robert K. Merton. Many of the books are written and assisted by other authors. Some of them are: "Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England," "The Family Encounters," "Social Theory and Social Structure," "Continuities in Social Structure," "Patters of Social Life: Exploration in Sociology of Housing," "Contemporary Social Problems," "The Sociology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical Investigations," and "The Sociology of Science in Europe."

Steve Woolgar has urged the sociology of scientific knowledge to 'interrogate representation', and he has advocated an exploration of reflexivity issues as a means toward this end. However, ten years of scholarship addressing the meaning and purpose of a subdiscipline dedicated to displaying the social constructedness of all texts (including, at least by implication, its own) have yielded little. I propose an approach to the reflexivity dilemma, and to the larger question of 'representation', which differs significantly from those previously attempted. This alternative requires the genuinely radical step of considering a very different philosophy of language than the one(s) currently shared by SSK researchers and the scientists whose accounts constitute SSK's 'data'. Philosophies of language which might serve as instructive examples presently exist in the thought of some indigenous peoples, particularly American Indians. I explore one such philosophy as it is articulated by a Navajo student of traditional learning. I then show how such a philosophy of language reconfigures the reflexivity problem, and also offers SSK some ideas about how it might begin to do what it cannot presently do: formulate a genuinely radical interrogation of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses that in the paper "Scientific Controversy as Farce," Caroline Joan Picart deals with the rapid closure of a scientific controversy surrounding a claim made by a French scientist Jacques Benveniste, that substances diluted beyond the Avogadro number were, in fact, still potent. Making partial use of a theoretical conceptualization suggested by authors H.M. Collins and T.J. Pinch, Picart suggests that the short lifespan of the controversy can be explained by the use of humor and the blurring of the boundaries between the constitutive and contingent forums of scientific discourse. The determining feature both of the development and the conclusion of the Benveniste controversy is to be found in the boundary separating the scientific and lay communities. The short lifespan of the controversy, as well as the manner in which it was handled, can therefore be explained by forces acting on the boundary between the scientific community and the lay public. Scientific knowledge generally emanates from the professional publications and is then simplified for publication in the more general publications.

In this paper we apply the laboratory study approach of the new sociology of scientific practice to a `thinking science': theoretical physics. To specify the work and accomplishments of theoretical physicists we choose the notion of `deconstruction'. Deconstruction involves the expansion of a concrete object, such as an equation, into a series of other objects upon which the `hardness' of a problem can be shifted and distributed. In solving an equation, however, the determinate path of a deconstruction method needs to be supplemented by the exploration of clues and guesses, trials and tricks. We trace a series of devices, and iterations thereof, which physicists mobilize in dealing with hard problems: formal deconstructions, detours and tricks to identify a working deconstruction, variation, `doing examples' modelling and, finally, thought alliances between subjects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author became involved with the theory that AIDS originated from contaminated polio vaccines by arranging for publication of a key paper, by interacting with prominent partisans and by writing articles himself. These experiences suggest some of the advantages and disadvantages of partisan intervention in the scientific reception system by a social analyst. Open partisanship should be added to the repertoire of social analysts of science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper engages with the debate over SSK's normative role (and over the moral and political responsibilities of the SSK analyst) by utilizing a 'sociology of monsters' framework to criticize Collins' insistence on the methodological and political necessity of neutrality, and his associated principles of compartmentalization and alternation. The advantages of viewing the analyst as an exemplary monster -- as marginal to, or simultaneously inhabiting, a number of intersecting social worlds -- are explored through a discussion of my attempts to draw on my contextualized SSK analysis of the vitamin C and cancer controversy, to inform policy recommendations intended to address asymmetries of power in the conduct and evaluation of clinical trials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this Introduction, we attempt to convey something of the angst we have experienced at various times during the long drawn out process of being commissioned as Editors of this Special Issue, of commissioning the authors and thereafter variously exhorting, encouraging and congratulating them (at a crucial stage, when the whole thing had got too big and the consulting referees had reported, being obliged to reject the efforts of some potential contributors); engaging the services of said referees, and later, with some difficulty, negotiating with them the continuation of the project; and finally, after an incredibly intense period of solid wall-to-wall subediting on the final drafts (Ashmore) and the writing of this Introduction (Richards), finding it all, almost, over: at last, at last, This is attempted through the deployment of an extended narrative metaphor which likens our field to a restaurant, and a lyrical coda celebrating anticlimax. We also manage to introduce the papers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Extended conttoversies over a new definition of death have occurred in most Western countries, providing good examples of the kind of 'science-based' disputes that increasingly characterize the policy of contemporary welfare states. In this paper, with the aim of introducing and testing a conceptual framework capable of capturing the more general features of such controversies, we reconstruct and examine the death-concept dispute in Sweden. The controversy is approached from both a diachronic and synchronic perspective. First, concepts are proposed for characterizing its origin, crystallization and termination. Then, we categorize and outline its 'argumentative structure' and typically 'mixed' character. Finally, we discuss some key concepts for understanding the sources of rival contentions, and apply them in more detail. In conclusion, we suggest that science-based controversies constitute an important research site for turning extant sociology and philosophy of science into a more politically relevant research field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to a recent descriptive account of the state of science studies in France, this Comment - which is a participant observer's account, not a research paper - seeks to contribute towards a sociological explanation of the observed state of affairs. The absence of specifically social studies of science in France is an aspect of the traditional French construal of science studies as consisting of (positivist or philosophically-minded) history of science. The reason why new approaches have difficulty in getting established is sought mainly in the structure of French institutions: decision- making bearing on intellectual choices is concentrated in very few hands, and these decisions affect, and streamline, most institutions throughout the country. Moreover, the large and overarching decision-making bodies, whose members have divergent preferences and interests, are inherently prudent and shun risk -taking: their very social structure favours conservatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some recent feminist analyses of science have focused on the method of science, claiming that it displays stereotypically masculine gender traits, and counterposing it to a putatively alternative method, embodying so-called feminine gender traits. The latter is advocated either as a replacement for the masculine method, or as a step towards the ultimate achievement of a gender-free method and science. This paper argues that recent work in the history of science and sociology of scientific knowledge casts considerable doubt upon any attempt to grasp some supposed methodological essence - masculine, feminine, de-gendered or whatever. It is shown that although methodological discourses are incapable of grasping the content and dynamics of the sciences, individually or severally, such discourses can serve as flexible rhetorical resources in the social processes of knowledge construction and negotiation of scientific knowledge claims. We illustrate this context-dependence and flexibility of method discourses by contrasting Evelyn Fox Keller's account of the work of Barbara McClintock with a variety of accounts of the work of Rosalind Franklin. It is shown that these method-centred accounts merely continue the politics of alternative accountings practised by scientists, and that they therefore are objects of social constructivist and contextualist analyses of science, rather than contributions to them. We conclude that neither feminist historiography of science nor feminist political intervention in the social institution of science is likely to be facilitated by faking such method discourses at a literal level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of measurement in nineteenth-century electrical science. By using the conceptual tools provided by a social constructivist sociology of scientific knowledge, it is possible to display the reciprocal relationship between different actors' conceptions of electrical science and their perceptions of the meaning and significance of electrical measurements. In particular, the debate between Michael Faraday and William Sturgeon concerning the volta-electrometer, provides an insight info the contingency of instruments as the only legitimate surrogates for electrical action. Faraday's experiments and Sturgeon's response to them make explicit the amount of interpretative work required to make the use of such surrogates self-evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A quantitative analysis of geoscientists' published opinions on continental drift theory between 1907 and 1950 indicates that the more prominent scientists resisted this revolutionary theory. Was this resistance based on the greater knowledge of these productive geoscientists, or were they protecting their reputations? The latter interpretation gains plausibility because the current acceptance of plate tectonics implies that the previous evidence given for drift should have established it as a plausible theory. The analyses and discussion in this paper illustrate (a) how quantitative evidence can be related to the 'interests' perspective; (b) the importance of assumptions in distinguishing 'social' and 'scientific' interests; and (c) some of the elements in the 'strong programme' in the sociology of scientific knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The need for an integrated social constructivist approach towards the study of science and technology is outlined. Within such a programme both scientific facts and technological artifacts are to be understood as social constructs. Literature on the sociology of science, the science-technology relationship, and technology studies is reviewed. The empirical programme of relativism within the sociology of scientific knowledge and a recent study of the social construction of technological artifacts are combined to produce the new approach. The concepts of 'interpretative flexibility' and 'closure mechanism' and the notion of 'social group' are developed and illustrated by reference to a study of solar physics and a study of the development of the bicycle. The paper concludes by setting out some of the terrain to be explored in future studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Critical studies of science reject the programmatic separation between technical and social aspects of science. By analyzing the social history of controversies, the rhetoric of scientific discourse, and informal aspects of laboratory work, recent studies have attempted to demonstrate that the objective products of scientific research are fraught with social contingency. The present paper agrees that the products of scientific activity are inextricable from the social contexts of their production, but raises the further question of how the relevance of any of the potentially endless varieties of social contingency is to be established in concrete instances of scientific work. Commonly, social studies of science specify such contingent relationship by relying on the established methods of the social science disciplines, while ignoring the fact that the natural scientific disciplines studied themselves include inquiries which specify such relationships as a necessary part of their ordinary practice. The alternative recommended here is to take an ethnomethodological approach. The distinguishing feature of the latter approach is that it recognizes the analytic primacy of context-specifying activities which occur at the sites of natural scientific inquiries. A transcript of conversation in a neuroscience lab is analyzed to show how 'critical inquiry' operates as a practical feature of natural science research rather than being a privilege of professional social scientists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the relationships between the German Labour Movement of the late nineteenth century and the contemporary natural sciences. The view of the natural sciences and of their role in society, developed by the Labour Movement, is sketched: they are considered to be ah important driving force of social progress, in their technical/economic aspects, as well as in their ideological/political aspects. The relationship between natural sciences and socialist theory of the time is analyzed -- particularly the attempts made to model socialist theory after the example of the sciences, in order to confer on it a comparable objectivity. In the third section, the similarities and differences between the contemporary bourgeois understanding of science and the view of science developed by the Labour Movement are discussed. The paradox that a radical movement like the labour Movement is prepared to acknowledge the authority of the natural sciences, produced and applied by their political opponents, can be partially explained by noting that the sciences are not just a weapon in, bur also the object of, its political struggles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It has bees claimed that 'reductionism' (broadly understood as a belief in explanation of biological phenomena wholly in physical and chemical terms) has been only of peripheral significance to the development of molecular biology and even that various forms of son or anti reductionism, have been important in that development. To examine these claims, this paper investigates the problems of analytical approaches to reductionism and reviews the early scientific and institutional history of molecular biology with respect to the role of reductionist assumptions. It is argued that for complete historical and sociological understanding of the role of philosophical assumption in molecular biology reductionism most be considered as a belief system more complex than that implied by any one definition of 'reduction' derived from philosophical analysis. It is concluded from the historical review that reductionism was of central significance to the development of molecular biology, since it was central to institutions financially supporting and promoting early molecular biology, and to all the heuristically significant scientific areas of the emerging molecular biological specially. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]