The political anatomy of controversy in the sciences

Abstract

Setting the problem Controversies are an integral part of the collective production of knowledge; disagreements on concepts, methods, interpretations and applications are the very lifeblood of science and one of the most productive factors in scientific development. This sociologist's claim signals a shift from what had been the more traditional understandings of the nature of science and its procedures. It is a shift that has been some time in the making and draws attention to the site of a new controversy itself in which a restructured sociology of knowledge of the natural sciences has taken on some of the strong claims for special characteristics of science. It is certainly distinct from the type of claim that the philosopher Norman Campbell made at the turn of the century when he defined science in terms of the areas of agreement that could be achieved. It is also distinct from the views thoughtfully developed by Robert K. Merton over several decades in the sociology of science in which he viewed almost all forms of conflict as representing intrusions of ethnocentrism and caste mores into the critically important norm of universalism, which he saw as one of the focal norms for scientific activity. (The one area of controversy that escaped this criticism in Merton's system was that over priority of scientific discovery. This kind of dispute, in this view, fruitfully falls well within the operative social system of science.) The claim that controversies are fundamental to the production of knowledge in the sciences also runs afoul of the thoughtful, historical-sociological interpretation of the institutionalization of science of Joseph Ben David.

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