The Social Basis of Scientific Discoveries

Preface Michael Mulkay 1. The topic of discovery and the concept of nature 2. Psychological accounts of discovery 3. A synthetic assessment of the psychological accounts 4. The emergence of a social model of discovery 5. Discovery as meaningful action 6. The law valid for Pisum and the reification of Mendal 7. Perspective, reflexivity and the apparent objectivity of discovery 8. Folk reasoning in theories about scientific discovery 9. Some sociological features of discovery Notes Bibliography Index.