Knowledge and Social Imagery

More about the book

The first edition of this book profoundly challenged and divided students of philosophy, sociology, and the history of science when it was published in 1976. David Bloor's radical claim was that the sciences, even "hard sciences" such as physics and mathematics, are dependent on social factors such as conventions, interests, traditions, and prestige as they are on observable physical phenomena or abstract logical necessity. In this second edition, Bloor responds in a substantial new Afterword to the heated debates engendered by his book.