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De la science normale à la science marginale. Analyse d'une bifurcation de trajectoire scientifique: le cas de la Théorie de la Relativité d'Echelle

Vincent Bontems

CEA/Saclay – DSM/DREC AM/SPEC/LARSIM – Bât. 772 Orme des Merisiers, F-91190 Gif sur Yvette Cedex, France, v.bontems @laposte.net

Yves Gingras

CIRST, UQAM, CP 8888, Suc. Centre-Ville, Montréal, Québec, Canada, H3C 3P8, gingras.yves{at}uqam.ca

In the scientific field, agents can choose to contribute to `normal' science, operate within the most highly legitimated avant-garde science (`superstrings', dark matter, etc.) or instead, develop theories within an entirely new theoretical framework, despite the risks which this entails. But the marginality of such theories raises a problem of strategy: those who choose to work on them do so at the expense of their own short-term interests, which would normally be oriented towards occupying a central position in already well-established fields. The theory of scale-relativity (TSR) demonstrates the interest of such a situation: the door is open to new possibilities, but ones that must be built `from scratch'. To pursue work in this direction is more demanding than to choose a project considered risky (due to its inherent difficulty) within the confines of an existing paradigm. On the one hand, TSR proposes to `innovate' and branch out from already widely-accepted conceptual bases, while, on the other hand, it finds itself in a marginal position with respect to the most legitimate avant-garde theories, such as `superstrings'. The case of the TSR thus allows us to study a region of the scientific field which has hardly been explored by a sociology of science that focuses primarily on `extreme' cases: histories of theories which have since been vindicated or spectacular controversies. In 2006, TSR occupies a marginal position within the field of physics. Its status differs widely from `theories' produced outside the field, yet does not correspond to any form of stable, accepted science. As we will show, using a detailed bibliometric analysis, the theory's diffusion throughout the scientific field has been limited — albeit real — and its results, when sanctioned by an official publication, are rarely taken into account by researchers who are not already TSR collaborators. This isolation within the field reveals conflict and tension between the transformation intended by a theoretical innovation and the norms of standard peer review. As a conclusion, we will compare the strategies of TSR's founder with those of other researchers who — at some point in their career — have attempted to reorient their scientific trajectory, which in turn reveals the social conditions of these bifurcations that put previously accumulated scientific capital at risk.

Key Words: Laurent Nottale • Marginal science • Scale relativity • Scientific controversy

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Social Science Information, Vol. 46, No. 4, 607-653 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0539018407082595
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