HSS-1 Technology and Society Reading – 8: THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF FACTS AND ARTIFACTS By TREVOR J. PINCH & WIEBE E. BIJKER The article by Trevor J. Pinch and Wiebe E. Bijker “ The Social Construction of Facts and Artifacts” talks about the “separation of science from technology” and how the study of science and technology can benefit each other. The authors draw attention to three bodies of literature in science and technology studies: sociology of science, science-technology relations, and technology studies. The first, or the sociology of science, explains the points of view of different people; especially scientists and researchers and they say that there are many theories and explanations for everything that is true or false in science. Science and technology are interconnected with each other; they are separated by a thin line that makes it difficult to distinguish them. Science is about discovering truth and technology is about applying that truth. Pg (19) thirdly technological studies are very methodical and systematic. It has been divided into 3 categories: innovation studies, history of technology and sociology of technology. The technology was regarded as a "black box" whose general behavior and attributes were considered common knowledge. The authors provide a great example of Bakelite production using waste materials from war supplies, which gains importance after people discovered how Bakelite can be mined. The authors then describe two approaches that explain the social construction of science and technology, namely EPOR (The Empirical Program of Relativism) and SCOT (Social Construction of Technology). The objectives of EPOR can be explained in three phases. The first stage suggests that there can... half of the paper ......ilieu, scores higher than the EPOR. Therefore it can be seen that both EPOR and SCOT are very similar but SCOT was developed recently and therefore is more effective in solving real world problems than EPOR which has a very theoretical approach to solving a problem. Although sociology technology is still very underdeveloped, but there is still room for substantial expansion in this field. The research will certainly yield good results when the sociology of science and the sociology of technology are studied together in depth. In the end I will say that I do not agree with the authors' point of view. Since the author's initial idea that technology and science are separate fields of study is completely wrong. The study of science requires technology, and technology is based on the study of science. They basically depend on each other. Sanchit Gupta2013088