1. I would like to thank a number of people who helpfully commented on an earlier draft of this paper. These include Peter Halfpenny, Karin Knorr, Roger Krohn, Bruno Latour and Michael Lynch.
2. S. W. Woolgar, ‘What Can Ethnomethodology Tell Us About Science As A Topic?’, Paper presented to Werner-Reimers Stiftung conference, Bad Homburg, 4–7th January 1979 and to BSA Sociology of Science Study Group, London, 13th February 1979.
3. In terms of its concern with issues of practical reasoning, fact production and the use of the documentary method of interpretation, ethnomethodology would appear to have a clear relevance for those interested in the nature of scientific inquiry. This relevance is implicit in the early work: H. Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology, Prentice Hall, New Jersey, 1967; issues more explicitly related to scientific work are raised in articles such as those by H. C. Elliot, W. W. Sharrock and D. H. Zimmerman in R. Turner (ed.), Ethnomethodology, Penguin, Harmondsworth, 1974. Most recently, scientific work has enjoyed extended and detailed treatment at the hands of a growing body of interested ethnomethodologists. See especially, M. Lynch, Art and Artifact in Laboratory Science: A Study of Shop Work and Shop Talk in a Research Laboratory, Ph.D. diss., University of California, Irvine, 1979; also M. Lynch, ‘Technical Work and Critical Inquiry: Investigations in a Scientific Laboratory’, Paper presented at conference on ‘The Social Process of Scientific Investigation’, McGill University 19–21st October, 1979.
4. Some of the earliest proposals to this effect can be found in S. B. Barnes and R. G. A. Dolby, ‘The Scientific Ethos: A Deviant Viewpoint’, European Journal of Sociology 11, 3–25 (1970); M. J. Mulkay, ‘Some Aspects of Cultural Growth in the Natural Sciences’, Social Research 36, 22–52 (1961); R. D. Whitley, ‘Black Boxism and the Sociology of Science: a discussion of the major developments in the field’, Sociological Review Monograph 18, 61–92 (1972).
5. The terms in which the debate is reported here derive from contributions to the seminar series: ‘Rationality and the Sociology of Knowledge’, Balliol College, Oxford, Summer term, 1979.