The leading research orientation in contemporary science and technology studies—the social construction of scientific knowledge (SSK, or social constructivism)—has been controversial since its inception in the 1970s. It primarily consists of a set of methodological imperatives for the study of science and technology that focus on the means by which people, ideas, interests, and things are organized in specific places and times to produce knowledge that has authority throughout society, especially among those not originally involved in the process of knowledge production. Thus, social constructivists tend to stress the diversity of interpretations and applications of knowledge across social contexts. However, in areas where philosophers and scientists might interpret that diversity as different representations or instantiations of an already established form of knowledge, social constructivists treat that variety as part of the ongoing core process of knowledge production.

Social...