The Development of Specialties in Industrialised Science

M odem developments in the sociology of sdentific knowledge, refieaed by the collections of papers presented at recent conferences,'' can be viewed as a reaction to the Mertonian tradition of research.' Whereas the latter concentrates on the development and operation of social institutions within sdence, the former seeks to unite this within an analysis of the cognitive structures produced by them. Thus cognitive developments within science are no longer viewed as being generated by an inevitable process of cumulative discovery guided by the application of 'the scientific method', but are seen as linked to social processes of conflict and consensus amongst working scientists. Conversely, the internal organisation of sdence and the behaviour of sdentists are no longer to be ejtplained simply in terms of the operation of social factors. Cognitive structures, be they 'paradigms'* or 'research programmes'^ must be viewed as sources of authority' which influence both the evaluation and control of what is to be accepted as scientific knowle(ige and the internal organisation of sdence in terms of the growth and decay of areas of research. It is apparent that most of the research in the early st^es of what m^ht be termed the 'neo-Kuhnian' sodology of science has sought to explain processes of sdentific change in terms of interrelated social and cognitive pr(x:esses internal to the sdentific enterprise. By contrast, work in related areas of the 'sdence and society' field has frequently emphasised the inadmissibility of considering sdence as an autonomous sub-(nilture withio sodety. The Marxist tradition in the history of sdence, exhibited in its most radical form in Hessen's work on Newton's Prindpia,'' has consistendy rejected the separation of sdentific culture from the 'material basis' of sodety. From a historical viewpoint it has been argued that the low degree of articulation of 'sdentific' cognitive structures in the early era of modern sdence renders meaningless attempts to differentiate between sdentific and non-sdentific culture.