Making science: between nature and society

Abstract

The sociology of science is dominated today by relativists who boldly argue that the content of science is not primarily determined by evidence from the empirical world but is instead socially constructed in the laboratory. Making Science is a serious critique by a sociologist of the social constructivitst position. It argues that although the focus of scientific research, the rate of scientific advance, and indeed the everyday making of science are influenced by social variables and processes, the content of the core of science is constrained by nature.