The article situates this special issue of Filozofski vestnik within the state of research in history and philosophy of science. On the one hand, it highlights the lack of translation of sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) in Slovenian epistemology while, on the other hand, drawing attention to some unresolved problems of SSK that have been addressed by some recent trends in science studies, like the global turn and calls for decolonization. In the absence of coherent schools of thought, the aim of the issue is hence not to import “solutions from abroad,” but to update the discipline in Slovenia while simultaneously appraising the state of international research which should serve as the standard of this modernization, thus arriving at an epistemology with local characteristics. Three methodological shifts are outlined, which the articles in this issue develop in dialogue with established studies of science. First, they expand the geographical scope of case studies not just beyond the Global North, but also beyond the borders of the former British and French empires. Second, building on the principle of symmetry, the same approaches may and are productively used to analyze the conceptions of elite intellectuals, Yucatec housewives, Habsburg officials, Carniolan farmers, doctors, meteorologists, or members of the Yugoslav Federal Commission for Nuclear Energy. Thirdly, scientific practices are not treated merely as anthropological micro-objects, but are examined in connection with the specific power relations in which they unfold.
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