Events

Because of its often technical focus, the critical edge of the sociology of scientific knowledge as it was promoted from the 1970s to the 1990s can easily be overlooked. For many observers of this classic period of SSK, discussions about its relativism, of which the so-called Science Wars were an important culmination, have ended up by obscuring the real target of its critical stance, i.e. the public image of science and its guarantor, the philosophy of science. This was indeed the situation to which Bruno Latour and Harry Collins, each in his own way, responded in 2002 and 2004 in their famous texts "The Third Wave of Science Studies: Studies of Expertise and Experience" and "Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam?” In a series of short papers and a subsequent discussion, we will ask whether the critical programme of the classical SSK can be regarded as a futile and regrettable casualty of the Science Wars. We will consider whether it could still prove its viability within STS, which has since reconfigured its critical competence, and perhaps beyond, for example in the field of general science education. Would it be an exaggeration to say that the original critical agenda of the SSK is becoming even more relevant in our societies, precisely because they are lamenting the loss of the togetherness and unity, the building of which has always been the primary research interest of the SSK?

To reflect upon the current situation in the STS field we should not overlook the strange disappearance of one of its predecessors, namely sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) – i.e., the detailed sociological study of how scientific facts or truths are being achieved by means of collective scientific practices. This subdiscipline has never been openly refuted or abandoned by STS practitioners, its authors are considered classics today, but still it almost vanished from the journals it once dominated. What actually happened? There are many possible explanations. In this paper, we will discuss Collins' argument, namely that the popularity of Latourian ANT is responsible for this development and that the critical agenda of science studies needs to be reformulated within the so-called third wave. We will also examine the Latour’s response to that time situation (esp. in his article Why has critique run out of steam?, 2004), which we read as an attempt to find a way to explain anew and continue his own program. We will conclude by considering the subsequent trajectories of both Collins’s and Latour’s work in relation to SSK and by a critical discussion of whether and why we miss SSK today.