Since 2012 there has been much controversy in building the super collider in China. The debate relates to scientific knowledge, scientific community internal and external, and social factors at many other levels. Sociology of scientific knowledge shows that the essence of the debate involves the inherent social attributes of scientific knowledge including scientific ontology, scientific cognition, and scientific intrinsic value. The internal sociology of scientific community shows that the debate involves scientific norms, scientific priorities, peer review and other topics. The external sociology of scientific community shows that the debate involves the scientific and social functions of value considerations, science and technology operation of social resource allocation, science and technology public policy choices, etc. At the same time, it associates with the previous two levels of implication. The social factors of these scientific arguments constitute the theoretical dimension of their sociological analysis.

super collider  /  scientific debate  /  scientific sociology  /  theoretical dimension