David Bloor 1942-present

David Bloor and the SSK

1970

David Bloor was born in 1902 in Derby, England. A British sociologist and a professor currently in the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh, Bloor was best known for his contribution of the Strong Program in the sociology of scientific knowledge, a field studying science as a social activity, which developed with the help of an interdisciplinary group with key figures like Paul Feyerabend and Barry Barnes in Edinburgh, Scotland in the 1970s.

Knowledge and Social Imagery (1976)

1976

Bloor, David. Knowledge and Social Imagery. 1st ed., University of Chicago Press, 1976.

The Strong Program

1976

David Bloor's contribution to science was the strong program. The central idea around the concept of the strong program was its “symmetry principle” which encompassed the idea that all forms of scientific beliefs and scientists’ behavior toward science should be approached the same way whether the beliefs are failures or successes.
A summary of David Bloor's ideas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C10Q0mEbhUI

Symmetry principle

1976

The principle adds that scientists are not an exclusive group of people but thinkers who live in a community with socially established local norms for regulating belief, supporting claims, or handling disagreement. Furthermore, it holds that science has no authority extending beyond the local norms

Relativism and Bloor

1976

The strong program’s principles took a relativistic approach. Relativism in the strong program’s sense was based on standards of rationality, evidence, and justification. Controversial in the application, Bloor used the strong program to analyze scientific beliefs and their relations to social circumstances like the political interests of scientists and their status in society.

Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge (1983)

1983

Bloor, David.Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. 1 ed., Columbia Univ Pr, 1983.