David Bloor and Barry Barnes The Strong Program Philosophy Essay
Barry Barnes and David Bloor of the Strong Program of the Sociology of Knowledge promote a naturalized epistemology that reduces all accounts of normativity to social causes. I endorse their program to naturalize one kind of normativity, but I argue that there is another kind of normativity that they cannot naturalize. Proponents of the “strong program” in the sociology of knowledge have argued that because scientific theories are “underdetermined” by data, sociological theories are “underdetermined” by data. Factors must be invoked to explain why scientists believe the theories they do. I examine this argument and the responses to it by J.R. Brown 1989 and L. Laudan 1996. I. Although Barry Barnes 1974, 1977 and David Bloor 1976, 1978, 1981 Bloor defines his 'strong programme' in the sociology of science in terms of three basic principles . Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, Part V. Edited by,