Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

This branch of study explores the social character of science, with special reference to the social production of scientific knowledge (see S ociology of knowledge ). In present-day society, the term ‘science’ has great potency. Not only is ‘science’ more or less equivalent to ‘valid knowledge’, but it also merges with ‘technology’, that is, the useful application of knowledge (see S cientific-technological revolution ). Consequently, those people known as ‘scientists’ are widely regarded as the purveyors of a superior kind of knowledge which represents the real world with a degree of precision and reliability that makes possible extensive control over its natural processes. In such a context, to be deemed ‘unscientific’ is, in the realm of ideas, to be dismissed as intellectually inept and also as irrelevant to the paramount world of practical affairs. Sociology itself emerged and developed as one small part of the scientific movement in modern society. Despite many reservations and differences of opinion among its practitioners, sociology has largely adopted the conception of knowledge that has come to be associated with the ‘advanced’ physical and biological sciences. As a result, the sociology of science necessarily has a self-referential element; that is, the practice of sociology falls within its scope and its general conclusions concerning the social process of knowledge ... log in or subscribe to read full text