CONSTRUCTION AND FICTION The Prospect of Constructionism in the Study of Science and Beyond'

1. Introduction In the last ten to fifteen years, constructivism has been central to the discussion of essential themes of modern thinking in many areas-how we know what we know, what we take to be real, what constitutes an individual or a subject, how we arrive at the meaning of a text, etc. Within the context of these discussions , several variants of constructivism have been developed. In this paper, I want to first draw aUention to different brands of constructivism which have their strongholds in different areas. None of them are homogenous doctrines of course, all overlap somewhat with each other, yet all are also marked by a distinctive history and by resulting specific features. I shall then offer my opinion on where constructivism points to in the area in which it has been most profitably deployed in empirical research-the area of the study of science. I shall argue that constructivism points, among other things, to the centrality of fictions in modern institutions, and thereby to a critique of modernism which holds that imaginary works have been bred out of technical, instrumental and bureaucratized action. The present paper, then, starts from philosophy to turn to social science: it takes its lead from constructivism as a philosophical statement that challenges realism in order to point out the implications constructivist claims have for our assessment of modernity. While constructivism has long been discussed-and criticized-with respect to the anti-realism it implies, it has not been discussed with respect to what it implies for our understanding of modern society. I want to maintain that constructivism's future lies with the latter rather than with the former. More specifically, it lies with understanding the fictional underpinnings and elements of modern institutions like science (see section 3).