Returning to the real meaning and implications of attempting to add a social dimension to the naturalistic study of scientific knowledge, one finds another dividing line that philosophers insist on keeping sharp and SSK insists on softening namely, the line that separates science from the rest of culture. This is technically called the demarcation criterion. Bloor (1991) says that the main "cause of [sociologists'] hesitation to bring science within the scope of a thorough-going sociological scrutiny is . . . . the conviction that science is a special case . . . naturally [he adds] philosophers are only too eager to encourage this."29 The reasons behind this hesitation are, of course, what sociologists must struggle against if they are to make a place for sociology in the naturalistic program.

As we have seen, one of the reasons is internalism, which the supposed autonomy of science relies on. Another has to do with an individualistic view. Referring to this last, Bloor argues: "Does not individual experience take place within a framework of assumptions, standards, purposes and meanings which are shared? Society furnishes these things and also provides the conditions whereby they can be sustained and reinforced. . . . The knowledge of a society . . . is their collective vision of Reality . . . not of a reality that any individual can experience or learn about for himself. . . . Knowledge then, is better equated with Culture than Experience."

This approach, assimilating rather than demarcating, integrating rather than separating knowledge from the rest of culture, is a recurrent theme in SSK. So, for example, Shapin (1982) says: "In the sociological approach to knowledge people produce it against the background of their culture's inherited knowledge, their collectively situated purposes and the information they receive from natural reality." These purposes are collectively designed, he says, and can pertain to both the technical scientific culture, and society in general. "Typically [knowledge], its usage and meaning, will be embedded within a complex social network, such that possible connections always exist between consideration in all parts of the net."31 And Barnes (1990) claims that knowledge is inherited, routinely transmitted from generation to generation; it is part of a cultural tradition, and as such is sustained by the authority surrounding custom and tradition. "Then, Barnes claims, "what counts as knowledge in most social contexts it is tempting to call customarily accepted belief.' It is sustained by consensus and authority much as custom is sustained. It is developed and modified collectively, much as custom is developed and modified. This we might call the standard sociological conception of knowledge." This "conventionalist collective," as Barnes calls it, view of knowledge comes face to face with the "individualistic rationalist" traditional view, according to which cognitive beliefs have a privileged epistemological status. Yet, he claims, if this status is not presupposed, it does not appear as evident. Each move in the game of science could be different, without offending either reason or experience; given that there are no compelling reasons, agreement about the correctness of the move must be consensually established.

Likewise, Collins (1985) claims that SSK approaches science as just another cultural activity, and he adds a demystifying aspect to this claim. In its broadest sense, Collins claims, a culture relies on the ability of human beings to see the same things and to respond to them in similar ways. Without this uniformity, there is neither culture nor society. Science, too, he says, relies on achieving and maintaining uniformities, but its tricks come to be so routinized that they are taken for granted. It is for this reason that in studying science one needs to pay special attention to what happens before the routine acceptance of uniformities begins.33 This could be done by looking at controversies before they are closed. Science, he says, works by producing agreement among experts. But agreements are the end result of controversies. After controversies close, one hears a single voice, that of the winning group. Yet, he says, "Allowing everyone to speak is as bad as allowing a single group alone to speak. It is as bad as having no-one speak at all."34 It is from the prevalent presentist view of science, a view that relies on hearing only the winning voice, that science appears to be empowered by a special authority. "Making science a continuous part of the rest of our culture," Collins says, "should make us less intimidated."

Another way of putting the antidemarcationist argument is Latour's (1987) way. He tells the dramatic story of a fictitious character, a supposed dissident scientist trying to make the case for his dissenting voice. He promises, with this story, to show "the heterogeneous components that make up science, including, the social ones." At a given moment in the story, Latour anticipates a possible objection from readers: "What do you mean social'? [the reader might ask] Where is captitalism, the proletarian classes, the battle of the sexes, the struggle for the emancipation of the races? Western culture, the strategies of wicked multinational corporations, the military establishment, the devious scientists? All these elements are social and this is what you did not show with all your texts, rhetorical tricks, and technicalities." Latouragrees that he has shown nothing of all this, and yet, he has shown, he says, something more important than these traditional "social" actors. He claims to have shown that, at the same time that scientific literature becomes more and more technical, the dissident, in turn, becomes more and more isolated. Due to the magnitude of resources in the hands of his opponent, the dissident ends up "isolated, besieged, and left without allies and supporters." If this "is not a social act," Latour says, "then nothing is." "The distinction between the technical literature and the rest is not a natural boundary; it is a border created by the disproportionate amount of linkages, resources and allies locally available. This literature is so hard to read and analyze not because it escapes from all normal social links, but because it is more social than so-called normal social ties."

In this way, by focusing on the view of science and knowing as collective social activities as one of the chief features of sociological naturalization, we have passed from a more "neutral" issue such as that the unity of knowledge making is collective and not individual to a less neutral one, that this activity is similar to other collective cultural activities. For there is no collective activity without an order, according to SSK, an order established by convention by a community's members. This order, in turn, once established, is routinely followed, and, after a time, is taken for granted, and then becomes invisible, and then, finally, is kept in place by authority. It is true that in our conventional wisdom one is not used to speaking of science and its knowledge in terms of order, routine, tradition, and/or authority. Yet it is not any less true that the relevance and/or propriety of using these expressions in a naturalistic approach is an issue that does not have to be decided a priori.

This issue is crucial in deciding about the demarcation issue in science studies. Thus it is up to the sociologists to prove, theoretically and empirically, that there is no sharp distinction. And, we saw, that is exactly what they intend to do. Similarly, it is up to the philosophers to demonstrate their affirmative decision by establishing a normative naturalized theory of rationality. Judging by the space that rationality has received in the philosophical literature, it seems that the Popperian idea that demarcation is the core issue in philosophy of science stands as firm as it always has.