Abstract
This paper examines how consistent theory construction can be made based upon six “unit ideas” of the sociology of science : scientists, scientists' behaviour, networks among scientists, the scientific community, scientific institutions, and the social system, each providing a different level of analyses sui generis. Attention is focused upon the implications of the institutionalisation of the scientific community.
Within the sociology of science since the 1980 s, detailed but divergent empirical works in different research streams in Europe have proliferated, but, in contrast, the concept and theory formation on the basis of which we can get a consistent perspective to grasp the overall structure of the field have not necessarily been fully developed. This situation requires us to construct a theory with high potential for developing a research programme, which is able to bridge the various research streams of the so-called Post-Kuhnians in the ongoing research front. If the theory constructed should lack the relevant frame of reference, it would then be incommensurable in relation to the respective universes of discourse.
This paper argues that : (1) the sociology of science can be exhaustively defined as the theory of (a) institutionalisation, (b) internal structure of the scientific community and (c) its interaction with other social groups ; (2) these theories can be proved to be commensurable in terms of their describing the state of the scientific community ; (3) “the convention of institutionalisation” (abbreviated “COI” below) as concerns the sequential pattern of institutionalisation should be introduced to the theory. The reason is that COI makes it much easier to extend the theory constructed so that sociologically meaningful but intuitively paradoxical results such as the possibility of professionalised science without institutionalisation (e.g., Aryan physics) can be derived.
