Barry Barnes, The Sociology of Relevance, and the Relevance of Sociology

Extract

I thought of putting something in the title about theology. Better not. Juxtaposing theology and any single social science might recall the sermon in The Way of All Flesh in which geology was shown first to be totally without significance for theology and then to be positive evidence for the literal truth of Genesis. If theology is to be explained away by sociology, that shows insufferable presumption. If theology could be helped by sociology, which would mean that theologians could or should learn something of it, then this would seem to burden yet further theological curricula. If sociology has no special relevance, but yet is an honourable way of earning a living, both sociologists and theologians should continue to cultivate their separate gardens; but is this not the old idea that something could be true in theology and false in philosophy, and vice-versa, which so annoyed Aquinas?

Fundamentally, the objection to the involvement of sociology in theology seems to be that sociology developed to study things going wrong. There can be a sociology of error; can there be a sociology of truth? The best way of answering this seems to be to look at the work of the American historian of science, T S Kuhn, as presented by the Edinburgh sociologist, Barry Barnes.