Social epistemology

Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches to the study of knowledge that construes human knowledge as a collective achievement. Another way of characterizing social epistemology is as the study of the social dimensions of knowledge. One of the enduring difficulties with defining "social epistemology" is that of determining what the word "knowledge" means in this context. There is also a challenge in arriving at a definition of "social" which satisfies academics from different disciplines. Social epistemologists may be found working in many of the disciplines of the humanities and social sciences, most commonly in philosophy and sociology. In addition to marking a distinct movement in traditional, analytic epistemology, social epistemology is associated with the interdisciplinary field of Science and Technology Studies (STS).

The term "social epistemology" was first used by the library scientists Margaret Egan and Jesse Shera in the 1950s. Steven Shapin also used it in 1979. But its current sense began to emerge in the late 1980s. In 1987, the philosophical journal Synthese published a special issue on "social epistemology" which included two authors that have since taken "social epistemology" in two divergent directions: Alvin Goldman and Steve Fuller³. Fuller founded a journal called Social Epistemology: a journal of knowledge, culture, and policy in 1987 and published his first book, Social Epistemology, in 1988. Goldman's Knowledge in a Social World came out in 1999. Goldman advocates for a type of epistemology which is sometimes called "veritistic epistemology" because of its large emphasis on truth. This type of epistemology is sometimes seen to side with "essentialism" as opposed to "multiculturalism". But Goldman has argued that this association between veritistic epistemology and essentialism is not necessary.

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