The growth of the social sciences has necessitated the development of formal systems of information storage, retrieval and dissemination over and above any informal and personal contact between individuals. The contribution of information scientists, in their attempts to structure social science information, raises certain questions about the epistemology of the social sciences. The writers examine these and some of the major problems related to the communication of information in sociology. They postulate a model derived from recent thinking in the sociology of knowledge, i.e., that the construction and validation of knowledge is itself a social process. Some possible implications of this approach are investigated.