Anthropological approaches to the sciences have developed as part of a
broader tradition concerned about the place of the sciences in today's
world and in some basic sense concerned with questions about the
legitimacy of the sciences. In the years since the second World War, we
have seen the emergence of a number of different attempts both to
analyze and to cope with the successes of the sciences, their broad
penetration into social life, and the sense of problem and crisis that
they have projected. Among the of movements concerned about the earlier
responses were the development social responsibility of scientists and
technological practitioners. There is little doubt that this was a
direct outgrowth of the role of science in the war epitomized by the
successful construction and catastrophic use of the atomic bomb. The
recognition of the deep social utility of science, and especially its
role as an instrument of war, fostered curiosity about the earlier
develop- ment of scientific disciplines and institutional forms. The
history of science as an explicit diSCipline with full-time
practitioners can be seen as an attempt to locate science in temporal
space - first in its intellectual form and second- ly in its
institutional or social form. The sociology of science, while certainly
having roots in the pre-war work of Robert K.