II.1 The Pseudo-Science of Science?

After several decades of benign neglect, the content of science has once again come under the scrutinous gaze of the sociology of knowledge. Aberrant Marxists, structuralists, Habermasians, ‘archaeologists of knowledge’ and a host of others have begun to argue (or, sometimes, to presume largely without argument) that we can give a sociological account ofwhy scientists adopt virtually all of the specific beliefs about the world which they do. More than this, it is often claimed that only via sociology (or its cognates, anthropology and archaeology) can we hope to acquire’a ‘scientific’ understanding of science itself. The older sociological tradition, which tended to take a hands-off policy where ‘sound’ scientific belief was concerned, has been variously indicted by the new wave as lacking the courage of its convictions, treating science as ‘sacred’ and unimaginatively selling short the explanatory resources of a robust sociology of knowledge.