Social Epistemology

US: Indiana University Press, 2002. Paperback. This is the book that launched the research program of social epistemology, which has fuelled imaginations and provoked debates across many discipline s around the world. Its opening question remains as pressing as ever: How s hould knowledge production be organised. The second edition contains a subs tantial new introduction, in which Fuller reflects on social epistemology's place in the history of analytic and continental epistemology and discusse s the inspiration he has drawn from a wide variety of fields in the humanit ies 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 Social Epi stemology Fuller seeks to reconcile normative philosophy of science and emp irical sociology of knowledge. He reinterprets key problems in the philosop hy of science, such as realism, the nature of objectivity, the demarcation of science from other disciplines, and the nature of our knowledge of other times and places. In the course of this reinterpretation, which draws on c oncepts and arguments from many branches of the humanities and social scien ces, Fuller considers such philosophically neglected questions as: How is t he burden of proof determined in science? On what basis is the historian li censed to say that a "consensus" has been reached on a scientific claim? Wh at implications do our patently imperfect means of linguistic transmission have for the notion that science "retains and accumulates" knowledge? Final.