Interests and Explanation in the Social Study of Science

TLDR

The strong programme’s recent applications in the social study of science emphasize naturalistic study and the use of interests as explanatory resources, yet they have largely ignored the nature of scientific argumentation. The authors analyze a case study to show how explanatory strategies obscure the core problems of interests‑based explanations. The study concludes that naturalism is vague and that focusing on revealing interests is less useful than examining how explanatory strategies are managed in scientific practice.

Abstract

Recent applications of the 'strong programme' in the social study of science involve (I) appeals for a 'naturalistic' study of science and (II) the invocation of 'interests' as an explanatory resource. It is argued that the notion of 'naturalism' is insufficiently clear and that attempts to 'identify' interests neglect important features of scientific practice. Studies of the content of scientific knowledge have proceeded at the expense of attention to the character of argument Itself. A detailed examination of one example of the many recent case studies hrghlights a series of explanatory strategies used to gloss the fundamental difficulties of 'interests explanation'. It is argued that rather than unreflectively attempting to 'reveal' interests it is more appropriate to turn our attention to the management of explanatory strategies in the practice of scientific argument.