Dados is one of the most widely-read social sciences journals in Latin America. Created in 1966, it publishes innovative works, originating from academic research, by Brazilian and foreign authors. Edited by IESP-UERJ, it aims to reconcile scientific rigor and academic excellence with an emphasis on public debate based on the analysis of substantive issues of society and politics.
Dados vol. 39 n. 1 Rio de Janeiro 1996
Abstract
The article discusses the literature that has been amassed on the sociology of scientific knowledge, approaching from the perspective of the Brazilian case's specific demands. Its premise is that the institutional issue, downplayed in the more recent literature, is still a central question in the study of science and technology in Brazil. It is suggested that this question may be incorporated into the study of the cognitive process, as proposed within network model. This admittedly is not a simple operation insofar as it requires establishment of a dialogue between diverging streams within the literature: the idealist tradition within the sociology of scientific knowledge (of obvious importance for our purposes in that the institutional question is central to its agenda) and network model, which in devising its radical criticism of the idealist tradition ended up relegating the institutional question to a secondary status. In response to the ensuing theoretical difficulty, the paper discusses the notion of intellectual autonomy and asserts that this notion - however tightly linked to the idealist tradition - may be reinvented so as to find a place within network model. The conceptual status of the institutional issue can thereby be recouped and lent a new meaning, more suited to analytical demands at the periphery, as is the Brazilian case.
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