Acknowledgments

Introduction 2003: The More Things Remain the Same, the More They Change

PART I: THE PLAYERS AND THE POSITION

1 The Players: STS, Rhetoric, and Social Epistemology

HPS as the Prehistory of STS

The Turn to Sociology and STS

Rhetoric: The Theory Behind the Practice

Enter the Social Epistemologist

Thought Questions

2 The Position: Interdisciplinarity as Interpenetration

The Terms of the Argument

The Perils of Pluralism

Interpenetration's Interlopers

The Pressure Points for Interpenetration

The Task Ahead (and the Enemy Within)

Here I Stand

Thought Questions

PART II: INTERPENETRATION AT WORK

3 Incorporation, or Epistemology Emergent

Tycho on the Run

Hegel to the Rescue

Building the Better Naturalist

Naturalism's Trial by Fire

Thought Questions

4 Reflexion, or the Missing Mirror of the Social Sciences

How Science Both Requires and Imposes Discipline

Why the Scientific Study of Science Might Just Show That There Is No Science to Study

The Elusive Search for the Science in the Social Sciences: Deconstructing the Five Canonical Histories

How Economists Defeated Political Scientists at Their Own Game

The Rhetoric That Is Science

Thought Questions

5 Sublimation, or Some Hints on How to Be Cognitively Revolting

Of Rhetorical Impasses and Forced Choices

Some Impasses in the AI Debates

Drawing the Battle Lines

AI as PC-Positivism

How My Enemy's Enemy Became My Friend

But Now That the Coast is Clear

Three Attempts to Clarify the Cognitive

AI's Strange Bedfellows: Actants

Thought Questions

6 Excavation, or the Withering Away of History and Philosophy of Science and the Brave New World of Science and Technology Studies

Positioning Social Epistemology in the Transition From HPS to STS

The Price of Humanism in Historical Scholarship

A Symmetry Principle for Historicism

Historicism's Version of the Cold War: The Problem of Access

Under- and Overdetermining History

When in Doubt, Experiment

STS as the Posthistory of HPS

Thought Questions

PART III: OF POLICY AND POLITICS

7 Knowledge Policy: Where's the Playing Field?

Science Policy: The Very Idea

An Aside on Science Journalism

Managing the Unmanageable

The Social Construction of Society

The Constructive Rhetoric of Knowledge Policy

Armed for Policy: Fact-Laden Values and Hypothetical Imperatives

Machiavelli Redux?

A Recap on Values as a Prelude to Politics

Thought Questions

8 Knowledge Politics: What Position Shall I Play?

Philosophy as Protopolitics

Have Science and Democracy Outgrown Each Other?

Back From Postmodernism and Into the Public Sphere

Beyond Academic Indifference

The Social Epistemologist at the Bargaining Table

Thought Questions

PART IV: SOME WORTHY OPPONENTS

9 Opposing the Relativist

The Socratic Legacy to Relativism

The Sociology of Knowledge Debates: Will the Real Relativist Please Stand Up?

Interlude I: An Inventory of Relativisms

Interlude II: Mannheim's Realistic Relativism

Is Relativism Obsolete?

Counterrelativist Models of Knowledge Production

Thought Questions

10 Opposing the Antitheorist

What Exactly Does "Theory Has No Consequences" Mean?

Fish's Positivistic Theory of "Theory"

Toward a More Self Critical Positivist Theory of "Theory"

The Universality, Abstractness, and Foolproofness of Theory

Convention, Autonomy, and Fish's "Paper Radicalism"

Consequential Theory: An Account of Presumption

Thought Questions

Postscript: The World of Tomorrow, as Opposed to the World of Today

Appendix: Course Outlines for STS in a Rhetorical Key

References

Author Index

Subject Index