The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts Coursework

The Social Construction of Facts and Artefacts - Coursework Example In technological writings or introduction of technology by historians, there has been reports and history of successful technologies and the failed ones are not included due to which, it seems that all technology is beneficial. Technological artifacts exist as social constructs. Science, as well as technology, can be understood as the social construct. EPOR (Empirical Programme of Relativism) has helped to construct science as a social construct. EPOR also represents the efforts of sociologists to understand science as a social construct. EPOR is a well-structured program and the empirical research related to EPOR is in an extensive extent while on the other hand, there is SCOT (Social Construction of Technology) for which there is not enough empirical research done. SCOT helps in the development of a multidirectional model for technological developments to construct artifacts of technology as social constructs. The members of one social group regard a technological artifact as having a single meaning socially. While thinking about the existence of a technological artifact as having a single meaning, there are many concerns such as whether the artifact has some relevancy for the members of a group and whether that social group is homogeneous or heterogeneous. For each social group, the artifact has a different social meaning and a different relevancy. Every social group has the different set of problems associated with an artifact and for each problem, there are separate solutions. Both the approaches EPOR and SCOT act similarly in explaining about science and technology relatively. Sociology of technology is underdeveloped than the sociology of science. EPOR approach accommodates sociology of science with interpretative flexibility which means that the sociologist of science has to indicate towards various interpretations of scientific findings and that various aspects of nature are not restricted to only one forced interpretation.