Steve Fuller (2006) - Introduction

"At the moment, STS suffers from a complacency that results from thinking
that because things can always be otherwise, we never need to commit to anything.
This inference works only if one is a disappointed foundationalist, not
someone who takes seriously that the future is largely what we collectively
I make of it. In this respect, STS as normally practiced is much less of a threat to
the future of science than scientists think. Indeed, we shall see in what follows
that the Science Wars have been so far largely a comedy of errors. Nevertheless,
there is something quite serious at stake-and worth arguing about-that
these pages endeavor to reveal."


"Seen from the inside, all sustainable social practices are rational.
Thus, when practices seem irrational to an outsider, such as the sociologist,
that is probably because she is applying a framework alien to the insiders. This
move has significant implications for the historical study of science"

"By the time we reach this point, it is fair to ask whether STS's failure to recognize
the "epistemic" character of science removes it from the sociology of
knowledge. However we answer this question, the phenomenon is itself worthy
of study as an episode in the sociology of knowledge. The techno scientific turn
may be radical from the standpoint of the intellectual history of STS, but it
also provides an explication, perhaps even legitimation, for associated social
tendencies that have accompanied the decline of the welfare state and the rise
of neo-liberalism. These are associated with the claims that we live in "knowledge
societies" ( Stehr 1 994) in need of "knowledge management" ( Fuller
2002a)."

Steve Fuller (2006)