| Sumario: | Social constructivism can be taken as a broad sociological-philosophical conception of science which would be introduced as follows: i) an explanation of the success of successful scientific theories ought to be done through the use of epistemological criteria and social community happenings at the construction and acceptance of those theories; ii) the knowledge produced by successful scientific theories, to be effectively taken as a knowledge, ought to be a representation of reality. The social constructivist conception has always been strongly criticized by traditional philosophical conceptions of science because 1) an explanation of the success of successful scientific theories should be made only through the use of epistemological criteria, and 2) the knowledge produced by successful scientific theories indeed is a representation of reality. This paper deals with criticism (1), through an expanded analysis of the debate between a representative of social constructivism (David Bloor) and a critic (Larry Laudan), based on the hypothesis that, although Laudan has pointed out some important limits to the scope of the social constructivist conception, the argumentative core of his critique does not hold, except as a prescription about the tasks of a real philosopher of science.
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