---
title: "Harry Collins"
type: "entity"
entity_kind: "person"
status: "hub"
canonical_name: "Harry Collins"
aliases: ["H. M. Collins"]
first_seen: "2026-10-10T00:00:00.000Z"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
connects_to: ["sociology of scientific knowledge","Empirical Programme of Relativism","Bath School","controversy closure","Mikel Olazaran"]
seek_code_commit: "d40ee39"
---


Sociologist of science and a founder of the "Empirical Programme of
Relativism" (EPOR), the Bath School strand of the sociology of scientific
knowledge (SSK) — distinct from the separate Strong Programme associated with
Edinburgh. His "Stages in the Empirical Programme of Relativism" (1981) and
*Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice* (1985) are
the explicit methodological foundation [[entity-mikel-olazaran|Mikel
Olazaran]]'s 1993 sociological history of the Perceptrons controversy says it
applies — Olazaran's own conclusion names "the controversy-closure scheme
from the sociology of science (Collins, 1981, 1985)" as the interpretive tool
for how the Minsky–Papert critique was read differently by rival
neural-network research groups, and how that interpretive flexibility closed.

Matters to this vault as the actual governing analytic framework behind its
own primary source for the Perceptrons controversy — a framework the vault
had, until now, read past without naming, crediting the chapter's conclusions
to Olazaran alone.

## References
- [[claim-olazaran-1993-applies-merton-multiple-discovery-to-werbos-not-perceptrons-dispute]]
- Captures: 2026-10-06-bipartite-ml-ai-epistemology-no-standalone-1969-first-edition-scan