Page "Sociology of scientific knowledge" Paragraph 10

In 1996, postmodern theorists of the sociology of scientific knowledge ( SSK ) were the targets of a hoax paper by Alan Sokal in the journal Social Text, under the title Transgressing the Boundaries: Toward a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.

The ensuing debate led to these thinkers being accused of " relativism "-- a charge that at least some proponents of the view embrace.

The supposed ' relativism ' prevalent within the SSK, especially in the work of ' strong sociologists ' such as Barry Barnes and David Bloor, may be regarded as a misnomer even though these sociologists themselves assent to the label.

This is because the strong programme does not deny the existence of a human-independent reality.

Neither does it affirm that all knowledge claims are ' really true ' just because the relevant community accepts them as true.

The position of strong sociology is that sociologically interesting knowledge ( e. g. institutionalised forms of knowledge ) are human products even when they have been formulated as a result of interaction with a human-independent physical world as is the case in the so-called natural sciences.

Such sociologically interesting knowledge is not given with the physical world but is a product of group / social processes.

They claim that passively observing the world will not convince ' rational ' individuals to assent to such knowledge.