01.13.06
Fuller and Epistemological Wasteland
With whatever result, the defendants in the Dover Trial stole a march on the philosophy of science front with Steve Fuller’s testimony in this area of the epistemological wasteland. Steve Fuller’s website has some useful information about ’social epistemology’, and summaries of his books. It is a bit hard to do a quick take on the complicated developments that make even Popper/Lakatos/Feyerbend ancient figures in a changing field.
Here’s a definition of social epistemology.
Social epistemology. An intellectual movement of broad cross-disciplinary provenance that attempts to reconstruct the problems of epistemology once knowledge is regarded as intrinsically social. It is often seen as philosophical science policy or the normative wing of science studies. Originating in studies of academic knowledge production, social epistemology has begun to encompass knowledge in multicultural and public settings, as well as the conversion of knowledge to information technology and intellectual property. The institutional presence of the field began with the quarterly, Social Epistemology (Taylor & Francis, 1987- ). Despite their many internal differences, social epistemologists agree on two points:
1. classical epistemology, philosophy of science and sociology of knowledge have presupposed an idealized conception of scientific inquiry that is unsupported by the social history of scientific practices;
2. nevertheless, one still needs to articulate normatively appropriate ends and means for science, given science’s status as the exemplar of rationality for society at large.
The question for social epistemologists, then, is whether science’s actual conduct is worthy of its exalted social status and what political implications follow from one’s answer. Those who say “yes” assume that science is on the right track and offer guidance on whom people should believe from among competing experts, whereas those who say “no” address the more fundamental issue of determining the sort of knowledge that people need and the conditions under which it ought to be produced and distributed.