When Things Strike Back a Possible Contribution of Science Studies to the Social Sciences

The contribution of the field of science and technology studies (STS) to main stream sociology has so far been slim because of a misunderstanding about what it means to provide a social explanation of a piece of science or of an artefact. Once this misunderstanding has been clarified, it becomes interesting to measure up the challenge raised by STS to the usual epistemologies they believed necessary for their undertakings. The social sciences imitates the natural sciences in a way that render them unable to profit from the type of objectivity found in the natural sciences. It is argued that by following the STS lead, social sciences may start to imitate the natural sciences in a very different fashion.