The scientific community indicates, in a rather broad direction, the whole of the enquiring and other personalities whose work has as an aim the Sciences and the Scientific research, according to scientific methods. Sometimes this expression is reduced to a particular scientific discipline: community of the astrophysicists for the Astrophysical , for example. The Sociologie of sciences is interested at this community, with the way in which it functions and fits in the company.

The term is of former use, and makes it possible a researcher to refer to his pars in order to legitimate its research tasks. This use is based on the evaluation of the research tasks by the pars within reading panels at the time of their communication.

However, the expression scientific community should not be taken too literally. Indeed, arise the following difficulties:

• the scientific community is not an organized community, with the direction where it does not have an legal representative, of recognized spokesperson;
• the scientific community is not a completely identified whole of people, and the membership of this one “is not labellisée”: to see for example the problem of the Pseudoscience S;
• the scientific community is not a union of people. In the same scientific discipline, including in the exact sciences, several different opinions can coexist.

The problem of blur of the expression is the same one as for the International community.

See too

Related articles

• Learned society

• Sociology of sciences
• Bruno Latour
• Thomas Kuhn