Contemporary public discussion of the sciences oscillates between uncritical adulation and sweeping rejection. Neither of these attitudes is appropriate for societies such as ours, which are profoundly affected by the sciences' intellectual development and technological achievements. Scholars in the social and cultural studies of science, the latest to mediate between science and society, have argued that the sciences are permeated and significantly shaped by social and cultural interests. They further argue that philosophical conceptions of reasoning and observation have no bearing on understanding scientific practice. Such arguments leave nonscientists unable to differentiate between competent and incompetent, credible and disputable, science. The PI rejects the dichotomy between the social and the cognitive that underlies both social constructivists and their philosophical opponents. Instead, she develops an analysis of scientific inquiry that both acknowledges the social dimensions of inquiry and keeps room for the normative and prescriptive concerns that have been the traditional preoccupation of philosophers. Her work will proceed through a detailed analysis of scientific papers in two areas of research, leading to a book that will examine the consequences of controversy and disunity in science for our conception of the nature of scientific inquiry.
