The Social Location of Scientific Practices

The mainstream tradition of modern science denies the historicity of scientific practices. It denies that their character changes, and must change, in fundamental ways that arise historically, and that are responsive to and shaped significantly by varying circumstances. In Section 1 I will identify several presuppositions that have been commonly used to support this denial: most notably, that the object of science is ahistorical and its methodology essentially unchanging, and that the character of basic scientific methodology is not dialectically linked with applied science. In Section 2 Kuhn’s rejection of the presuppositions about the object and unchanging methodology of science will be endorsed, thus providing support for what Margolis has referred to as a ‘remarkable (but somewhat muffled)’ version of the historicity of science.2 Then, in Section 3, drawing upon a detailed analysis of a contemporary controversy between agrobiotechnology and agroecology, I will move beyond Kuhn and also reject the other presupposition that there are no dialectical links between methodology and application

Geography · Contemporary Sociological Theory and Practice