New Left Review I/210, March-April 1995
Christopher Norris
Truth, Science, and the Growth of Knowledge
What is the status of scientific truth-claims? Can they purport to hold good for all time across vastly differing contexts of language, culture, and society? That is to say: is science in the business of providing valid explanations of physical objects and events whose nature remains constant despite such deep-laid shifts of cultural perspective? Or is it not rather the case—as currently argued by relativists, pragmatists, and ‘strong’ sociologists of knowledge—that those contexts provide the only means of understanding why science has taken such diverse forms (and come up with such a range of competing ‘truths’) throughout its history to date? [1] See for instance Barry Barnes, About Science, Oxford 1985; Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, Harmondsworth 1967; David Bloor, Knowledge and Social Imagery, London 1976; Steve Fuller, Social Epistemology, Bloomington 1980 and Philosophy of Science and its Discontents, Boulder 1989; Steve Fuller, Marc de Mey, Terry Shinn and Steve Woolgar, eds, The Cognitive Turn, Dordrecht 1989; Karin D. Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge, Oxford 1981; Bruno Latour, Science in Action, Milton Keynes 1987; Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life, London 1979; Steve Woolgar, Science: The Very Idea, London 1988; Woolgar, ed., Knowledge and Reflexivity, London 1988.
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