Relativism in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge Revisited 1

This chapter revisits, from a new angle, some of the debates over the relativism of the “Sociology of Scientific Knowledge” (SSK). The new angle is provided by recent work on relativism in epistemology and the philosophy of language. I defend three theses. First, SSK-relativism is not an instance of Paul Boghossian’s well-known “template” for relativism. Second, SSK-relativism is therefore not directly threatened by arguments targeting this template position. And third, SSK-relativism is nevertheless in the vicinity of this template, and it offers at least sketches of arguments for distinctive and original relativist theses.