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Thestrong programme orstrong sociology is a variety of thesociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) particularly associated withDavid Bloor,[1]Barry Barnes,Harry Collins,Donald A. MacKenzie,[2] and John Henry. The strong programme's influence onscience and technology studies is credited as being unparalleled.[3] The largelyEdinburgh-based school of thought aims to illustrate how the existence of ascientific community, bound together by allegiance to a sharedparadigm, is a prerequisite for normal scientific activity.
The strong programme is a reaction against "weak" sociologies of science, which restricted the application of sociology to "failed" or "false" theories, such asphrenology. Failed theories would be explained by citing the researchers'biases, such as covert political or economic interests. Sociology would be only marginally relevant to successful theories, which succeeded because they had revealed a fact of nature. The strong programme proposed that both "true" and "false"scientific theories should be treated the same way. Both are caused by social factors or conditions, such ascultural context andself-interest. All human knowledge, as something that exists in the human cognition, must contain some social components in its formation process.
As formulated by David Bloor,[4] the strong programme has four indispensable components:
Because the strong programme originated at the 'Science Studies Unit,'University of Edinburgh, it is sometimes termed theEdinburgh School. However, there is also a Bath School associated withHarry Collins that makes similar proposals. In contrast to the Edinburgh School, which emphasizes historical approaches, the Bath School emphasizes microsocial studies of laboratories and experiments.[5] The Bath school, however, does depart from the strong programme on some fundamental issues. In thesocial construction of technology (SCOT) approach developed by Collins' studentTrevor Pinch, as well as by the Dutch sociologistWiebe Bijker, the strong programme was extended to technology. There are SSK-influenced scholars working inscience and technology studies programs throughout the world.[6]
In order to study scientific knowledge from a sociological point of view, the strong programme has adhered to a form of radicalrelativism. In other words, it argues that – in the social study of institutionalised beliefs about "truth" – it would be unwise to use "truth" as an explanatory resource. To do so would (according to the relativist view) include the answer as part of the question,[7] and propound a "whiggish" approach towards the study of history – a narrative of human history as an inevitable march towards truth and enlightenment.
PhysicistsAlan Sokal andJean Bricmont wrote a scathing critiqueFashionable Nonsense of the Strong Programme in 1997 and its reliance onsocial constructionism.[8] In their view postmodernists on the far left attempted to recast scientific controversy as a political struggle between good (progressivism) and bad (conservatism), a form of Marxist class struggle, one that leads to a dead end that obscures, rather than enlightens.[9] They assert that the main error of the "Strong Program" is to ignore that scientists primarily use nature and mathematicians logic, not social pressures, to validate their findings.[9]: 85–87, 90 They demonstrated that academics such asFeyerabend,Latour,Lacan,Irigaray,Kristeva (Ch3) andDeleuze regularly attempted to apply nonsensical metaphor from the physical sciences and mathematics to bolster their theories of how scientific agreements were achieved.[9]: 78–85, 92–99, 27–37, 38-49 106-123, 154–168
PhilosopherJoseph Agassi argued that it is impossible to explain science by referring to social circumstances alone and that demanding that history do so is irrational.[10]
Markus Seidel attacks the main arguments –underdetermination and norm-circularity – provided by Strong Programme proponents for their relativism.[11] It has also been argued that the strong programme has incitedclimate denial.[12]
