Barnes worked at the 'Science Studies Unit' at the University of Edinburgh with David Bloor from the 1970s through the early 1990s, where they developed the strong programme in the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge. He moved to the sociology department in Exeter in 1992. Barnes is known for his naturalistic approach to science, a view elaborated in his book Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory (1974). He advocated a post-Kuhnian approach to scientific knowledge, and suggested that philosophers, historians and other researchers study scientific practice in a variety of fields as cultural traditions whose development could be given causal explanations. In this view conceptual change in normal science is a process unfolding through expert debate and negotiation. This latter perspective was developed in T. S. Kuhn and Social Science (1982).
Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory, London; Boston : Routledge and K. Paul, 1974. ISBN978-0415474375
Interests and the growth of knowledge, London; Boston : Routledge and K. Paul, 1977. ISBN978-1138972964
with Steven Shapin (ed.), Natural order: historical studies of scientific culture, Beverly Hills, Calif; London : Sage Publications, 1979. ISBN978-0803909595
with David Edge (ed.), Science in context : readings in the sociology of science, Milton Keynes : Open University Press, 1982.
T. S. Kuhn and Social Science (Traditions in Social Theory), ISBN978-0333289372
Relativism, Rationalism and the Sociology of Knowledge (with David Bloor) in: Hollis, M./Lukes, S. (ed.): Rationality and Relativism, Cambridge (Mass.), MIT Press, 1982, pp. 21–47. ISBN978-0262580618
On the Extensions of Concepts and the Growth of Knowledge in: Sociological Review 30/1, 1982, pp. 23–45.
Relativism as a Completion of the Scientific Project in: Schantz, R./Seidel, M. (ed.): The Problem of Relativism in the Sociology of (Scientific) Knowledge, Frankfurt, ontos, 2011, pp. 23–39. ISBN978-3868381283