ABSTRACT
Much of nursing and medical practice is predisposed to an uncritical acceptance of science. Nursing and medicine (and all other health-care disciplines) are engaged in the exposition of scientific suppositions and methods to justify the care and treatment that is dispatched to patients in the health service. Research-based ‘evidence’ is given priority over other approaches to understanding the patient’s condition. The sociology of science, however, aims to analyse critically the foundation of scientific knowledge. At the core of this critique is the constructionist proposition that knowledge of any sort, whether emerging from a traditional source (for example, magic, witchcraft), co-existing lore (such as alchemy, metaphysics, celestial prophecies, psychoanalysis, paranormality, and religion), or science, is bound by temporality and culture.
