ABSTRACT
Although social constructivism argues that both epistemological criteria and social community factors must be taken into account in the explanation of a scientific achievement, critics of this approach persist on the idea that social constructivists assign an exclusive role to social community factors - so, scientific facts are not a representation of nature but instead only a social construction. The aim of this paper is to argue, through a discussion of the concept of construction for social constructivist (by Isabelle Stengers’ concept of heterogeneity and Karin-Knorr Cetina’s concept of selection) not for advocating social constructivism itself, but for pointing its plausibility as a conception of science from an enlightenment of the concept of construction: a scientific achievement cannot be understood as an inescapable one, but depends on epistemological choices and social circumstances within scientific communities.
Keywords:
social constructivism; construction of scientific facts; disparity; selection; Isabelle Stengers; Karin-Knorr Cetina