Tilting at imaginary windmills: A comment on Tyfield

Abstract

In the inaugural issue of this journal, David Tyfield (2008) used some recent discussions about "meaning finitism" to conclude that the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) is an intellectually hopeless basis on which to erect an intelligible study of science. In contrast, the authors show that Tyfield's argument rests on some profound misunderstandings of the SSK. They show that his mischaracterization of SSK is in fact systematic and is based on lines of argument that are at best incoherent.