ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the claim that scientific knowledge is exceptional because it is not socially constructed. The most well known account of the construction of social reality is to be found in the work of Berger and Luckmann. To Berger and Luckmann this indicates that a prime task for sociology must be to understand how widely differing beliefs are generated and how these beliefs attain their compelling quality for the members of a society. Through the case studies of gravitational radiation and of phrenology it has been shown how scientific knowledge is negotiated and constructed both within the relatively insulated social environment of the laboratory and in the context of political debate. The issue of the status of scientific knowledge is best approached through a direct consideration of the foundations of science's authority. The alternative argument for the non-constructed nature of scientific belief comes from the apparent truth of science.
