Relativist/Constructivist Programmes in the Sociology of Science: Redundance and Retreat

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Abstract
Two recent collections of empirical reports claim to offer a new and possibly more effective agenda for the sociology of science. These claims are challenged. The `relativist' and `constructivist' programmes yield findings often of historical or ethnographic interest, but rarely new when compared to earlier theoretical writings. Moreover, methodological and metatheoretical assumptions of the programmes force a retreat from the constitutive question of the sociology of science: how does the institution of science establish and maintain its `cognitive authority'?

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