Science as a Social Movement

This chapter discusses the question on authority of science can be answered in a similar way to the question of the standing of particular scientific knowledge claims. The establishment of science's authority can also be analysed as a process of closure, a closure of competition between forms of cognitive authority. A central analogy which will assist in making sense of this claim about the nature of scientific authority is that of science as a social movement. In the sociological literature the term 'social movement' is applied to informal organizations set up to pursue a goal or set of objectives. The image or professional ideology of science simultaneously stresses its positive characteristics and reveals the weaknesses of its rivals. Assisted by its ideological and institutional flexibility the social movement of science has achieved great success; as was recorded in the Introduction, by the nineteenth century science stood as a 'norm of truth' for 'cultured Victorians'.