Abstract

Summary: For some years, social constructivism has been confronted with a range of basic caveats and objections. From the point of view of the critics, the concept of a “social construction of reality” has proved to be an unattractive varia- tion of anti-realism that acknowledges the right of social things to exist, but does so at the price of denying non-social entities the right to their own reality. This article attempts to rebut this line of criticism. Using the example of the socio- logy of scientific knowledge, it argues that social constructivism follows an empirical research program that pursues the question as to which interpretations of reality achieve social commitment. The paper argues, with regard to considera- tions of neo-pragmatism and analytical language philosophy, that the social constructivist sociology of science takes a theoretical position that maintains distance from the premises of both realism and anti-realism even though many of its advocates have opted explicitly for one of the two sides