Breaking the Waves in Science Studies

The human mind finds threesomes reassuring. Perhaps it has to do with the lateral symmetry of our bodies: right, left, and center. Three, at any rate, is a favorite structuring principle in art and argument. Triptych and trilogy. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. Wide pendulum swings modulating to a restful mid-point. To Harry Collins' credit, his threesomes have not always aimed for the comfort of the happy middle. In 1981, when he announced the three-stage 'empirical programme of relativism' (EPOR), Collins (1981) charted an ambitious research program for the then young field of science studies. The two initial stages were indeed formulated as thesis and antithesis: first, display the interpretive flexibility of experimental claims; then, show how interpretation solidifies and loses ambiguity, despite possibilities for endless debate. The program's third stage, however, was a call for expanding rather than limiting the analyst's field of vision, by relating the production of scientific knowledge to its wider social and political contexts. Among other things, this invitation to science studies scholars to step outside the self-appointed boundaries of science and technology opened the door to productive conversations between the sociology of scientific knowledge and neighboring social science fields, such as history, anthropology, and political science. In this 60-page discussion paper, written more than two decades later, Collins and his co-author Robert Evans (hereafter C&E) try once again to fit science studies within a three-fold schema (Collins & Evans, 2002). The 'stages' now have become 'waves', but the authors' object, as in Collins' earlier programmatic piece, is to position existing work within the first two waves and set the stage for a third one. Unlike the third stage of EPO,