The Role of Shared Knowledge in Science: The Failure of the Constructivist Programme in the Sociology of Science

A new, self-conscious trend in the sociology of science has recently arisen, declaring the contents of science to be its province. It holds that everything in science, from would-be observational statements to the most recondite and abstract theories, is human and social, and as such, be it true or false, subsumable under sociological explanation. Scientific knowledge, it is claimed, even if it is at all about the external world, is the outcome of negotiations between interested parties, the contingent product of a social process of construction. Two approaches can be distinguished within this relativist sociology of science. One focuses on the process of negotiation on the macro-level and studies the formation of scientific consensus through publications. A second, more recent, tendency has shifted its interest to the micro-level, and studies the formation of scientific knowledge in the laboratory. Karin D. Knorr-Cetina's The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science' is doubtless the boldest and most consequential attempt to state the case for this latter approach so much so, indeed, that it provides a convenient and welcome