Conclusion

Abstract

I have tried in this book to give the reader as wide a review of the principal areas of interest in the sociology of science today. I have been particularly keen to indicate how this work relates to important issues within the field of science policy, to show how this growing body of research can be regarded as more than simply an academic specialty within the discipline. In highlighting the major shifts in the sociology of science I have suggested that it has been able to explore more successfully and interestingly the new directions in which science and technology are moving today. These ‘new directions’ are not simply of a cognitive or conceptual nature — new fields of research for example, such as biotechnology — but also of an institutional character: in fact, both feed back on each other, cognitive developments shaping and being shaped by institutional developments. Biotechnology, for example, has opened new areas for investigation and new forms of investigation as the corporate/academic interface has created novel institutional structures within which the research has been pursued.