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The constructive nature of scientific inquiry 81 The contextually contingent nature of science 88 The participant-centered nature of science 90 The social-cognitive distinction 92 The two-sciences distinction 93 Summary 94 REFERENCES 97 1 CHAPTER I Recently, there has been a great deal of conceptual upheaval in the sociology of science. It has undergone, in Kuhn's (1970) terras, a paradigmatic revolution. Ironically, Kuhn's description of how scientific revolutions occur has played a major role in this revolution (Barnes, 1982). The recently deposed paradigm was generally known in the specialty as the traditional view of science. Its exemplar was the work of Robert Merton (1970) on the norms of science. Its major contention was that science yields an epistemologically unique way of knowing reality, objectivity. The new paradigm is known as the constructivist program in the sociology of science. It has two research exemplars, Latour and Woolgar's Laboratory Life (1979) and Knorr-Cetina's The Manufacture of Knowledge (1981). Its major contention is that scientific knowledge is, like all of forms of knowledge, social or subjective in nature. According to this paradigm, scientific facts are not objective descriptions of the natural world, rather they are social constructions produced by scientists during social interaction. It appears that the constructivist program is just entering what Kuhn (1970) referred to as a period of normal science during which the new dominant paradigm in a specialty consolidates its position and accumulates supporting evidence. The research reported here may be viewed as part of the supporting evidence accumulating under the new paradigm. Like the exemplars for the constructivist program (Latour and