Pocock, Williams, Gouldner' Initial Reactions of Three Social Scientists to the Problem of Objectivity

Between 1958 and 1962, with the publication of Polanyi's Personal Knowledge and Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, objectivity carne to be recognized as a problem of fundamental, not to say ultimate, importance. The problem is of ultimate importance for the pursuit of all forms of knowledge and of fundamental importance to the natural and social sciences. Polanyi and Kuhn are two of the natural scientists who, by the mid-twentieth century, had defined the problem in such a way that their work is recognized as revolutionary. The revolutionary meaning of their work in fact defines the context in which objectivity derives its fundamental, ultimate importance.