Can sociologists understand other forms of life?

Sociologists of Scientiªc Knowledge sometimes claim to study scientists belong-ing to other forms of life. This claim causes difªculties, as traditionally Wittgensteinians have taken it to be the case that other forms of life are in-comprehensible to us. This paper examines whether, and how, sociologists might gain understanding of another form of life, and whether, and how, this understanding might be passed on to readers. I argue that most tech-niques proposed for gaining and passing on understanding are inadequate, but I end by describing a method that might work. The problem Many workers in Science Studies have been heavily inºuenced by Witt-genstein’s later philosophy. Those inºuenced by Wittgenstein fall roughly into two groups: “Sociologists of Scientiªc Knowledge, ” whose work will be discussed in greater detail in what follows, and “ethnomethodologists,” of whom the best known is probably Michael Lynch.1 This paper is exclu-sively concerned with a set of problems faced by the Wittgensteinian Soci-ologists of Scientiªc Knowledge. On occasion, these investigators claim to study scientists belonging to other forms of life. For brevity, throughout this paper, I shall refer to people belonging to other forms of life as “aliens”—though it should be borne in mind that I am chieºy concerne