The Fear of Unreason: Science Wars and Sociology

This paper considers one recent and continuing set of arguments about the representation of science, the so-called ‘Science Wars’, and argues that, for a number of reasons, this dispute has particular strategic value for raising questions about the discipline of sociology today. These reasons include: the participation of the sociology of scientific knowledge; the fact that the dispute is explicitly concerned with disciplinary boundaries, competence and legitimacy; and the ways in which the dispute connects to related arguments within sociology. It is argued that whilst much of the debate focuses on an alleged crisis of reason, the most interesting issue to emerge may rather be a questioning of the salience of disciplinarity.