Sir

During its first quarter-century, discussion of the sociology and history of scientific knowledge (SSK) was largely restricted to social scientists. We welcome the growth of interest from natural scientists, especially as the most recent contributions represent a move towards serious debate.

We think we are still divided by rivers of misunderstanding, but at least they are no longer oceans. We can now see the possibility of building bridges. On our side we are beginning to see that our way of putting things, conditioned by 25 years of debate within the social sciences, might give natural scientists cause for concern. At the same time, we seem to be making progress in showing that most of this concern is misplaced. We will content ourselves in this letter by trying to clarify a few points.

Those who describe themselves as sociologists of scientific knowledge agree about most things. There are minor ‘philosophical’ disagreements between those who were first trained at Edinburgh and others, such as us, but the case-studies that emerge under the SSK label are virtually indistinguishable. ‘SSK’ is the most useful description for the group who consider that the core of the subject is careful, sociologically informed case-studies of experimentation and theory building.

SSK does not try to compete with natural science in the establishment or evaluation of scientific findings. We are social scientists and we do not think that evaluation of scientific findings is our business except in special circumstances; such circumstances have not arisen in this debate.

Because we are not in the business of evaluating scientific findings, we think it would be wrong of us to offer a running assessment of the pieces of scientific knowledge we discuss. Gottfried and Wilson1 suggest that when we discuss some scientific finding we should keep the reader up to date with the latest developments in the field.

It is as though they would argue that a historical study of what made people give up phlogiston and take up the idea of oxygen would be flawed unless it referred to the way oxygen is presented in the periodic table, used by divers and welders, and saves lives in hospitals. We are concerned with what caused changes in view before things were thoroughly established because we want to use this as a model of what happens in current controversies.

We believe that the most constructive discussions will turn on the question of contemporaneous versus retrospective history of science. The purpose served by each approach needs to be drawn out. We look forward to developing the analysis alongside our new colleagues.