Stages in the Empirical Programme of Relativism

Abstract

Modern philosophy of science has allowed an extra dimensiontime into descriptions of the nature of scientific knowledge. Theories are now seen as linked to each other, and tQ observations, not by fixed bonds of logic and correspondence, but by a network, each link of which takes time to be established as consensus emerges and each link of which is potentially revisable given time.' Many contributors to this new model intend only to make philosophy of science compatible with history while maintaining an epistemological demarcation between science and other intellectual enterprises. One school, however, inspired in particular by Wittgenstein and more lately by the phenomenologists and ethnomethodologists, embraces an explicit relativism in which the natural world has a small or non-existent role in the construction of scientific knowledge.2 Relativist or not, the new philosophy leaves room for historical and sociological analysis of the processes which lead to the acceptance, or otherwise, of new scientific knowledge. One set of such analyses is gathered in this issue of Social Studies of Science. The studies reported here emerge out of the relativist approach, the approach which has given rise to some of the most vigorous social analyses. Studies of modern science in this genre have been reported since at least 1975 but the reports have been either un-