Understanding scientific/technical controversy

The material in this paper originates from a Doctoral thesis, l and lectures presented in the University of Wollongong Science and Technology Studies Department undergraduate subject 'Scientific Controversies' in 1993. During the preparation of this material, I noted that there was an absence of overviews of the literature, sufficiently clear or detailed, to guide the uninitiated through the subtle, but philosophically important, differences between the main currents of academic thought on Scientific and Technical Controversy (STC). The following 'map of the literature' has been designed to try to fill this gap and also to raise awareness of some of the valuable intellectual possibilities that can arise from a critical cross-fertilization of differing theoretical approaches, something which rarely occurs at present.