THE THIRD WAVE OF SCIENCE STUDIES AS A PHILOSOPHICAL JUSTIFICATION FOR STS

Abstract

The principle of reflexivity is a stumbling block for David Bloor’s “strong program” in the sociology of scientific knowledge — the program that gave rise to alternative projects in the field called science and technology studies (STS). The principle of reflexivity would require that the empirical sociology of scientific knowledge must itself be subject to the same kind of causal, impartial, and symmetrical investigation that empirical sociology applies to the natural sciences. However, applying reflexivity to empirical sociology would mean that sociologists of science fall into the trap of the “interpretive flexibility of facts” just as natural scientists do when they try to build theories upon facts, as the empirical sociology of scientific knowledge has discovered. Is there a way to overcome this regression in the empirical sociology of knowledge? Yes, but it lies in the philosophical rather than the empirical plane. However, the philosophical “plane” is not flat, because philosophy is accustomed to inquiring into its own foundations. In the case of STS, this inquiry takes us back to the empirical “plane,” which is also not flat because it requires philosophical reflection and philosophical ontology. This article considers the attempt by Harry Collins to bypass the principle of reflexivity by turning to philosophical ontology, a manoeuver that the empirical sociology of science would deem “illegal.” The “third wave of science studies” proposed by Collins is interpreted as a philosophical justification for STS. It is argued that Collins formulates an ontology of nature and society, which underlies his proposed concepts of “interactional expertise” and “tacit knowledge” — keys to understanding the methodology of third-wave STS. Collins’ ontology begins by questioning the reality of expert knowledge and ends (to date) with a “social Cartesianism” that asserts a dualism between the physical and the mental (or social).