A critical assessment of the theoretical implausibility of social constructivism

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.