Mol 88: "Contoversy was pivotal to the philosophy of science in the 1960s and 1970s [...] What happens if two scientific theories contradict each other? Will the data decide which is the better, or is that impossible, since each theory generates its own data and excludes those that fit the other?"
87: "For a long time, much effort in science studies was devoted to the question of how controversies close and what makes them do so. Is closure a consequence of finding new facts or are all facts open to endless negotiation? Is closure a matter of solving the logical contradictions between theories or of solving the social conflicts between groups promoting theories? The horizon of the discussion was the presuppostion that controversies indeed come to rest at an end point in which differences are settled"
89: "In the same period, various sociologists of science were no longer satisfied with the study of the social preconditions for and the social effects of scientific knowledge; they began to ask questions about knowledge itself"