This book proposes a fresh approach to sociological analysis and, in particular, to the analysis of scientific culture. It moves away from previous studies, which have tended to focus on scientists' actions and beliefs to show that analysis of scientific discourse can be productive and revealing. The book demonstrates that scientists produce varying accounts of their actions and beliefs in different social situations. Rather than attempting to extract one coherent interpretation from these diverse accounts, the study identifies two basic scientific (...) repertoires and shows how scientists use them to create their discourse. This provides a point of departure for more complex analytical topics. Discourse analysis is applied to show how different degrees of 'consensus' can be ascribed to the same group of scientists at a given moment in time through the application of standard interpretive techniques. Finally, discourse analysis is used to explore scientists' humour, a neglected topic that is shown to provide important insights into the normally hidden interpretive regularities which underlie the cultural diversity of science. (shrink)

I explore heterogeneous constructionism, my term for the perspective that science in the making is a process of agents building by combining a diversity of components. Issues addressed include causality and explanation; transcending both realism and relativism; scientists as acting, intervening, and imaginative agents; explanations that span many levels of social practice; counterfactuals in the analysis of causal claims; and practical reflexivity. An analogy from research on the social origins of depression and a sketch from my own experience in socioeconomic (...) modeling are used to motivate and render more concrete the form of heterogeneous constructionism I am advocating. (shrink)

At the end of a thoughtful article on the future of nuclear war, Wiesner and York concluded that: "Both sides in the arms race are... confronted by the dilemma of steadily increasing military power and steadily decreasing national security. It is our considered professional judgment that this dilemma has no technical solution. If the great powers continue to look for solutions in the area of science and technology only, the result will be to worsen the situation.".