Deciphering Science and Technology

As science and technology have pervaded modern life to an ever greater degree, social scientists have been led to find questions of the causes and consequences of ''expert'' knowledge arising in places that would have been felt unlikely hitherto. Varcoe, McNeil and Yearley''s book assembles nine exemplary studies by sociologists, each of which explores an aspect of the current scientific-technological ''revolution''. Some popular ideas are challenged. So, too, implicitly, are certain large-scale social scientific theories claiming to have discerned in science and technology an overall meaning.