Adelaida Ambrogi Alvarez, University of the Balearic Islands

Pickering (1992, p. 1) speaks of the field now commonly called sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) as "a new approach to thinking about science" that differentiated itself from contemporary philosophy and sociology of science in two ways: first, in that "scientific knowledge itself had to be understood as a social product"; and second, in that "SSK was determinedly empirical and naturalistic."2 In this paper I intend to explore the nature of the divergences between SSK and philosophy of science. This exploration intends to illuminate the relationship between the two, a relationship that, from the beginning, has been marked by an open and bitter controversy which has ignited more fire than illumination of key points.

I will begin with a summary of the history of the relationship between the two. I intend to show that, during its development, there were significant changes in both fields; I will also display the internal development of each field, as well as although to a lesser degree the relationship itself. In the second part of the paper I will enumerate some of what seem to be the key points that differentiate philosophical from sociological studies. As we will see, the basic ideas of the sociological program appear, implicitly or explicitly, to be violating ideas that have traditionally governed the philosophical approach to science. This is precisely what would explain and make reasonable the strong resistance with which SSK has been met since the beginning. Yet the changes that have occurred meanwhile in the philosophy of science itself especially those which have led to what is known as naturalization, have challenged the feasibility of some of those old basic ideas. It is thanks to these last changes, I will claim in the conclusion, that SSK might be able to find a "natural" place in the empirical and interdisciplinary study of science that philosophy itself has promoted under the name of naturalization.