Quote of the Day

[timelets]

In short, if an engineer-sociologist is to be proved right he or she has to create a new market; success is measured by the amount of profit gained. This, in all its simplicity and toughness, is the test of truth.

--upd--

Sociologists, when they develop, as Bourdieu and Touraine did, analyses that are opposed to each other point for point, can coexist without problems, just as in those preparadigmatic situations so well described by Kuhn (1970). For engineer-sociologists this sort of , ambiguous situation did not make any sense. Either the VEL would find a market and eliminate competing techniques, or it would become a fiction without a future, thus leaving the road free for the traditional automobile. Both the VEL and the traditional motorcar could not be developed at the same time for the same purpose.

--- Michel Callon.
Bijker, Wiebe E., et al. The Social Construction of Technological Systems : New Directions in the Sociology and History of Technology, MIT Press, 2012.

Note the difference between being right vs knowing the truth, i.e. constructing a topos is a physical activity.