A new journal of social epistemology

A glance at the June issue of Episteme: A new journal of social epistemology

Episteme is a new journal of social epistemology, which focuses on the social dimensions of knowledge, says Anthony Quinton, a former president of the University of Oxford’s Trinity College and a fellow of its New College and All Souls College.

“Social epistemology arose from the recognition that nearly all that we believe or claim to know is secondhand and derived from the speech or writing of others,” he writes.

Two styles of social epistemology, the analytical and critical approaches, are represented in Episteme.

Analytical social epistemology grapples with questions like how facts presented by other people can ever be satisfactorily verified, while critical social epistemology examines fields like science and history as social constructions, in other words, as things that are “brought into existence by human social activity, like government and the family and unlike mountains and icebergs,” Mr. Quinton says.

“Episteme is not the first journal to take social epistemology as its theme,” he writes, “but it is the first, I think, to try to bring the two kinds of epistemology I have distinguished together.”

The journal will be published three times a year, by Edinburgh University Press. Information about the journal is available at http://www.episteme.eu.com