Until very recently, the idea of knowledge-related cultures had little currency.
Knowledge creation seemed a matter of rational, cognitive, and technical procedures
undertaken by scientists; it neither needed nor did it lend itself well to cultural or any
other kind of social scientific investigation. Traditionally, philosophy had taken it
upon itself to explore the methods of science, but philosophy being philosophy was
not interested in the empirical question of how knowledge was produced. The
assumption of the unity and universality of science that had emerged since the
time of the Vienna Circle of philosophers contributed to the division between
knowledge and culture. If there was only one scientific method and one knowledge,
how could the notion of culture apply to science?