timelets: (Default)
[personal profile] 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.
If you don't have an account you can create one now.
HTML doesn't work in the subject.
More info about formatting

Profile

timelets: (Default)
timelets

June 2025

S M T W T F S
123456 7
8 9 1011 121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 14th, 2025 01:25 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios