Making Science: Between Nature and Society - Softcover

For the general audience, ["Making Science] offers a broad analysis of realism and relativism in science and helps shake sociologists out of a simple, positivist view of science, scientists, and their conduct. For specialists in the sociology of science, Cole's new book brings to bear a demanding appraisal of constructivism, and perhaps most consequentially, it demonstrates the need for continuing assessment of science as an occupation, institution, and activity. Presents a wealth of empirical material on the vast scope of anomalies and irregularities in the work of the scientific community. The survey includes a good deal of valuable material originating with the author and his collaborators. -- Alexander Vucinich "Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences" For the general audience, "Making Science" offers a broad analysis of realism and relativism in science and helps shake sociologists out of a simple, positivist view of science, scientists, and their conduct. For specialists in the sociology of science, Cole's new book brings to bear a demanding appraisal of constructivism, and perhaps most consequentially, it demonstrates the need for continuing assessment of science as an occupation, institution, and activity. -- Mary Frank Fox "Contemporary Sociology"

The sociology of science is dominated today by relativists who boldly argue that the content of science is not primarily determined by evidence from the empirical world but is instead socially constructed in the laboratory. "Making Science" is a serious critique by a sociologist of the social constructivitst position. It argues that although the focus of scientific research, the rate of scientific advance, and indeed the everyday making of science are influenced by social variables and processes, the content of the core of science is constrained by nature.