Is there a future for the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge? Well, it all depends what you mean by Future, Sociology, Science, and Knowledge. Ho ho. Nearly a hundred and fifty people were drawn together by this question for a conference in London on Saturday 7 September (organised by Sally Wyatt and Tim Jordon here in Innovation Studies and Sociology, UEL), although we didn’t take a vote it seems reasonable to tentatively suggest the hypothesis that, given certain conditions, there is. So long as no-one insists on calling it by that name.

This is interesting.

Naming, the passing on of names, the assumption of names, and the attachment we have to those names seems significant. Proper Names are the sign of Property. Property supposes ownership. Belonging supposes a willingness to be owned.

On the top table at the opening of the conference we had the usual suspects as keynote speakers. The unifying theme of all the speeches was their difference from each other. For example, Keynote Lecture number one: Steve Woolgar was against Natural Realism. Keynote Lecture two, Barry Barnes was for Natural Realism, but against Essentialism. Keynote three: Sandra Harding, stressed her surprise at being invited, after all she was an Epistemologist - nothing to do with SSK. And Keynote number four: Wiebe Bijker said, we should pay our respects to our Epistomological roots, but move swiftly on and dedicate ourselves to the real matter at hand - the practical details of the Political dimension - i.e. change society.

Thus we can conclude that this community values difference, and that its members belong to different camps (either positively or negatively) Natural Realists, Epistemologists, Marxists, Not-natural-realists, Not-orthodox-marxists, Not-SSK.

So, the un-named (unnamable?) community values difference, and this value is firmly held, deeply entrenched, and faithfully honoured. Evidence? Each of the speakers and many of the listeners were pushed to the point of perplexity when someone seemed to be agreeing with them: `No no’, they replied, ‘you’ve misunderstood me’ etc until the difference was once more established, and disagreement reigned - at least at the level of talk.

And what other level might there be? Well it certainly seems to have some relationship to something in the body. Evidence? Red faces, and blustering fluster, and the calling of names. One point in a question session had some members hankering for a unity of feeling: they began speaking about past battles that SSK had participated in, they raised the spectre of old (and still active) enemies. Someone (I wouldn’t dream of saying who…) seemed to be suggesting that SSK would be ok if it could win over the likes of Lewis Wolpert to the cause… Tension rose at the prospect of such a union. Suddenly we all knew which side we were on. Evidence? - the gale of laughter that ripped through the room when someone (I wouldn’t dream of naming names) located Wolpert in a specific camp: he was a Prat. Well, why not, it unstuck the debate and enabled us to continue talking about how different we were from each other (safe in the knowledge that none of us were THAT different).

Have you, by the way, seen The Usual Suspects? That wonderful film with the wonderful Gabriel Byrne. If you saw it you might have noticed that it was impossible to make any sense of it on traditional who-dunnit kind of lines. Epistemologically speaking it caused confusion. Morally, however, it made sense when you put the cripple in the place of the devil and thought about redemption and god (buy me a beer and I’ll explain it to you - in the meantime it all depends upon realising that the Devil is ultimately in the Service of God). I mention it here because god and the good was one way of making sense conhere with reference to that Saturday meeting in September. We were engaged in asking about the right the good and the true, avoiding a mono-theic order.

Names. Now, what is this business about names, the level of talk, the relationship of bodies - be they bodies of knowledge, insitutions, men, or women - Property and ownership? Or put it another way, how do you be part of a community that refuses a common name and a common figure. Is it possible to name oneself (auto-nomie) without reference to ownership and property? (clue: no), or is this a question about the difference between an-archy and poly-archy? (clue: yes). Last night I noticed a programme on telly which showed some anthropologists talking about a society of apes. The focus was on what happens to baby apes when their fatherhood is in question. First of all we were invited to focus on what this means to the perplexed possible father. He seemed to realise that said infant was not a consequence of his productivity, so he killed the offending product. And then we were invited to see it from the perspective of the other female apes in the society. They killed it too. (There are enough of these illegitimate offspring to make it possible for the whole community to join in the ritual.) Oh yes, and then they ate it. Thus we can conclude, that it is impossible to know some pretty important things in the absolute (vis: the patronage of a baby ape), and that the inability to decide this and to attribute a name (a patro-nym) is cause for considerable concern. The implication of the programme (it seemed to me) was that it mattered quite a bit what one did with the concern once it was unleashed.

If we allow the idea of Difference to be the fundamental defining point of our community (and this phrase implies both ownership and belongingness) then it raises some interesting questions about how to belong. The notes I took as Steve Woolgar spoke are peppered with suggestions on this topic: SSK is provocation not position'.The purpose of reflexivity is modesty’. Reflexivity avoids arrogance'.We must avoid the dangers of complacency’ (cf Ethnomethodology which has been accused of moving out to the suburbs’). So far so good. `The linear model is deeply entrenched, needs uprooting, exorcising.’ I personally have a few problems with this last one.

The conference itself was held at The Tavistock Institute in North London, in a room with glorious views over the vast spread of this great and wonderful city (ok, so my prejudice is on view - better out than in say I). It was great to be in a conference venue that admitted so openly to the outside world, and invited it in so unreservedly. I wonder if this is coincidental to the owner of the place? The Tavistock Insitute is a psychoanalytical clinic, and invites parts of the world in that other institutions prefer to leave outside. I wonder whether we - whatever banner we each choose to rally under - have the technical capacity (and, of course, I am using technical in the new post-SSK sense of the word, that is the pre-modern) to accommodate such differences as there are in the world, or whether we are in grave danger of adopting the more forthright strategy of our friends the apes. Watch this space.