ABSTRACT
B. Latour introduces the paradoxical claim that an objective description of social organizations, like his own description of a scientific community, is possible, but an objective science created by this community is not. Like pragmatists and structuralists, Latour postulates that science cannot be separated from other types of structured knowledge which help the people cope with environment. A central idea of positivism was that the methods established by the natural sciences could apply to psychology and the social sciences as a check on current beliefs. For both K. Popper and J. Habermas, the distinction between the philosophical reflection needed for the adoption of a strategy of research and the descriptive theory resulting from the adopted strategy is of critical importance. The exclusion of philosophical reflection, and perhaps of a large part of the social sciences, from the domains in which the choice is justified does not mean that acceptable persuasion should not rely on a concept of truth.
