Skip to main content
Skip to content navigation menu
Skip to services menu
Indiana University

Social Epistemology

Unjacketed Library Edition

Social Epistemology

Second Edition
Steve Fuller
Foreword by Thomas Nickles
Distribution: World
Publication date: 1/28/2002
Format: cloth 352 pages, 1 bibliog., 1 index
6.125 x 9.25, unjacketed library edition
ISBN: 978-0-253-34069-6
Bookmark and Share
cloth
 $49.95 
  

 Add to Wish List 

Description

“One of the freshest books that I have read in a long time. It will shake you up. You will not always agree with Fuller, but he will force you to rethink some of your pet conceptions about how science works.” —Isis

This is the book that launched the research program of social epistemology, which has fueled imaginations and provoked debates across many disciplines around the world. Its opening question remains as pressing as ever: How should knowledge production be organized? The second edition contains a substantial new introduction, in which Steve Fuller reflects on social epistemology’s place in the history of analytic and continental epistemology and discusses the inspiration he has drawn from a wide variety of fields in the humanities and social sciences. It also includes a spirited attack on alternative philosophical groundings for social epistemology and a detailed response to the standard criticism that social epistemology has received from realist philosophers and natural scientists during the “Science Wars.” In its new edition, the book remains a provocative contribution to the debate on the production, dissemination, and interpretation of knowledge in the sciences.

Author Bio

Steve Fuller is Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Trained in the history, philosophy, and sociology of science, he is the founding editor of the journal, Social Epistemology, and has promoted social epistemology as an interdisciplinary project in seven books, including the controversial Thomas Kuhn: A Philosophical History for Our Times (2000) and most recently Knowledge Management Foundations (2001). His works have been published in nine languages. Social Epistemology was his first book.

Customer Reviews

Comments
There are currently no reviews
Write a review on this title.


Table of Contents

Introduction to the Second Edition
Foreword by Thomas Nickles
Preface
Part One: Issues in Defining the Field of Social Epistemology
1. An Overview of Social Epistemology
2. Social Epistemology and Social Metaphysics
Part Two: Issues in the Language and History of Knowledge Production
3. Realism, the Moving Target of Science Studies: A Tale of Philosophers, Historians, and Sociologists in Hot Pursuit
4. Bearing the Burden of Proof: On the Frontier of Science and History
5. Incommensurability Explained and Defended
6. The Inscrutability of Silence and the Problem of Knowledge in the Human Sciences
Appendix A; How to Do Subtle Things with Words—The Ins and Outs of Conceptual Scheming
Part Three: Issues in the Social Organization of Knowledge
7. The Demarcation of Science: A Problem Whose Demise Has Been Greatly Exaggerated
8. Disciplinary Boundaries: A Conceptual Map of the Field
9. The Elusiveness of Consensus in Science
10. From Moral Psychology to Cognitive Sociology: Making Sense of the Forman Thesis
Appendix B: Having Them Change against Their Will—Policy Simulations of Objectivity
Part Four: Issues in Knowledge for Policy-Making
11. Toward a Revival of the Normative in the Sociology of Knowledge
12. Social Epistemology and the Problem of Authoritarianism
Appendix C: Notes toward Designing a Core Curriculum for a Graduate Program in Knowledge Policy Studies
Bibliography
Index