Introduction

At the present time, the deepest problems in the understanding of science are social rather than epistemological. The older problems of the attainment of truth or its substitute, have given way to the concern for the maintenance of the health of science, and for the control of its applications. Until very recently, the two aspects of science, the activity itself and the resulting knowledge, have been studied separately. Both sorts of inquiry have been impoverished by this separation. Analyses of the social behaviour of scientists, and of the external influences on scientific research, have assumed the products of that research to be absolute, and unconditioned by the particular circumstances of their achievement. On the other hand philosophical analyses of the nature of scientific knowledge have either been completely abstracted from the processes of its achievement, or have invoked a model of a working scientist isolated from his environment and traditions. But a proper analysis of the social activity of science must be based on understanding of the very special goals of the scientists’ tasks; and an analysis of achieved scientific knowledge must comprehend its character as a social possession, the product of an historical process. An analysis of science which unites these two aspects will be able to resolve the apparent paradoxes in its nature: that out of a personal endeavour which is fallible, subjective, and strictly limited by its context, there emerges knowledge which is certain, objective, and universal. Also, such an analysis should help to explain the failures of scientific inquiry as well as its successes, and could provide guidance for the solution of the social problems of the science of the present and near future.