Scientific authority is contingent on social factors from "summary" of Leviathan and the Air-Pump by Steven Shapin,Simon Schaffer
The idea that scientific authority is contingent on social factors is at the heart of the argument put forth in "Leviathan and the Air-Pump". This concept challenges the traditional view that scientific knowledge is purely objective and independent of the society in which it is produced. Instead, Shapin and Schaffer argue that scientific authority is shaped by the social context in which it is situated. In the book, the authors illustrate this concept through a study of the dispute between Thomas Hobbes and Robert Boyle over the validity of the air-pump experiment. They show...
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