On the Background of Social Epistemology

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the work of Thomas Kuhn and the related historical study of science—and he traces some of the associated work in the philosophy of science that responded to the history of science. It explores the recognizable various antecedents of concerns that are both sociological and philosophical. The book traces the way in which contemporary analytic epistemology came to be concerned with the social production and the social distribution of knowledge. Science as a social phenomenon will inherit various biases and limits from the social groups in which it is practiced. Externalist epistemology afforded the opening for social epistemology. Epistemology had to do with the class of processes by which folk ought to form and maintain their beliefs or understandings, and these were taken to be those with some fitting balance of reliability and power or fecundity.