Sociology of scientific knowledge
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The sociology of scientific knowledge SSK is the examine of science as a social activity, particularly dealing with "the social conditions in addition to effects of science, together with with the social structures and processes of scientific activity." The sociology of scientific ignorance SSI is complementary to the sociology of scientific knowledge. For comparison, the sociology of knowledge studies the affect of human knowledge and the prevailing ideas on societies and relations between knowledge and the social context within which it arises.
Sociologists of scientific knowledge analyse the development of a scientific field and try to identify points of contingency or interpretative flexibility where ambiguities are present. such variations may be linked to a sort of political, historical, cultural or economic factors. Crucially, the field does not sort out to promote relativism or to attack the scientific project; the objective of the researcher is to explain why one interpretation rather than another succeeds due to external social and historical circumstances.
The field emerged in the unhurried 1960s and early 1970s and at number one was an most exclusively British practice. Other early centers for the development of the field were in France, Germany, and the United States notably at Cornell University. Major theorists add Barry Barnes, David Bloor, Sal Restivo, Randall Collins, Gaston Bachelard, Harry Collins, Karin Knorr Cetina, Paul Feyerabend, Steve Fuller, Martin Kusch, Bruno Latour, Mike Mulkay, Derek J. de Solla Price, Lucy Suchman and Anselm Strauss.