Collins' Empirical Programme Of Relativism

In modern times, the publications of the Philosophy of Science indicate that achievements in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK) have widely academic influences. Be different from traditional approach of Merton's, Sociologists of SSK challenge the objectivity and reality of scientific knowledge by using the sociological methods, tracing the investigations of scientists' experimental lives and revealing the existence of sociological factors.Mr. Harry Collins is a professor of Cardiff University in Britain. He had worked on the Strong Programme in his early years. And then he built his own programme which named Empirical Programme of Relativism (EPOR). Some people who belong to Bath School, such as Pinch, Travis give him a lot of support in this process. Mr. Collins is one of the well-known exponents of "controversy studies" in the SSK. He uses microanalysis method on his sociological studies which gives a good example to other investigators. Moreover, his EPOR develops the research on scientific knowledge further at the same time.The goal of this paper is to introduce the Collins' EPOR and make a little evaluation on it. The first part is to introduce the source of EPOR. It includes the Ludwing Wittgenstein's forms of life, Thomas Kuhn's paradigm and David Bloor's Strong Programme. The second part is to expound contents of the EPOR which has three stages: Demonstrating the interpretative flexibility of experimental data; Showing the mechanism by which potentially open-ended debates are actually brought to a close-that is, describing closure mechanisms. Relating the closure mechanisms to the wider social and political structure. The third part is to introduce empirical foundations of the EPOR. G.D.L. Travis' experiment is concerned with memory transfer in biology. A.R. Pickering's study is magnetic monopole. T.J. Pinch's work is on the solar neutrino debate. B.Havey looks at experiments on non-locality. The fourth part falls into two parts. At one hand, Trevor J.Pinch and Wiebe E.Bijer applied the EPOR to research technology, generated Social Construction of Technology (SCOT). On the other hand EPOR still comes in for a lot of criticisms which comes from Larry Laudan, Harriet Zuckerman and Knorr-Cetina etc. At last, try to give the EPOR some suggestions from author's own opinions in this paper.Now that is for sure, Philosophy of Science which base on the History of Science is turing to the Sociology gradually. So, at this time, it is significant to do some researches on Mr. Collins' EPOR.