On Steve Fuller's Social Epistemology

Epistemology is one of the main lines in the history of Western philosophy. As early as the era of ancient Greece, people had begun to explore the world of knowledge. Generally speaking, epistemology had experienced the development from rational period to social cognition. Because of the increasing complexity of the exploration to nature, the means, methods, tools and the other social factors for scientific exploration gradually affected almost all aspects of scientific activities. The methods of traditional scientific Cognitive had been unable to meet the increasingly complexity requirements of natural and social reality. Correspondingly the person who behind the closed doors tries to quest for knowledge and obtain satisfactory answers is difficult. Then the possible problems of knowledge and the problems of Science alienation appeared. So we have to strengthen cooperation between people, attention to the political, economic, cultural and other social factors in the process of scientific exploration all of this proposed new requirements fbr scientific research.To insist traditional epistemology, of which the cognition to the outer world is based on the knowledge derived from inner sense, may cause people to lose the possibility to seek knowledge of nature, and even, if the scientists just focus on the scientific researches and neglect social and humane factors, raise many social problems such as the separation between the knowledge of science and subjectivity and human alienation from the scientific knowledge. The Social Epistemology tries to change the traditional epistemological from inner sense, and attempts to solve the social problems of the lacking of democracy in the traditional epistemology, the loss of the subjectivity, poor popularity of scientific literacy and so on. So in a sense, the Social Epistemology conforms to the current trend of the development of epistemologyThis paper starts from Steve Fuller's social epistemology in political viewpoint, makes a study of its main contents and explores the significance. It also regards social epistemology as a way of substituting individual authority into social power step by step, uses effective organization of knowledge to regulate the process of it, makes scientific policy to further knowledge of science with the direction of popularization, which aims to solve the problems arose in the development of epistemology.The thought of social epistemology of Steve Fuller focuses on the book of social epistemology. In this paper, we will combine to the content of social epistemology and introduce the Fuller'thought, and then we try to introduce Fuller's thought in five aspects:the Field of social epistemology, the history of knowledge production, the social organization of knowledge production, knowledge policy-making, and Establishment of Popular Science. Then in the next part, the paper makes a more comprehensive study on Fuller's thought through his interpretation on Thomas Kuhn and critical opinion on Karl Popper.Through research we find that Fuller's social epistemology is correlative with intelligent design. Why does Fuller support to intelligent design, which was defined as non-scientific theory? This relates to his thought of social epistemology. In the paper, I will study the theoretical logic of Fuller's social epistemology and the theory of intelligent design, and find the relation between them, so as to provide a necessary theoretical background for the readers to understand Fuller's social epistemology more comprehensively.There is no ultimate truth in the world. Any thought has its shortcomings. So is Fuller's social epistemology. This study's focus and innovation is how to combine Fuller's social epistemology to develop the current epistemology. After the comprehensive discussion of Fuller's theory, this paper tries to find a new method to explain epistemology in the socialization trend on the study of epistemology. In this sense, I present the point of view that the scientific research is a process of knowledge producing, which is under the control of market mechanism. Many social factors weight much in this process, but at the same time the traditional epistemology based on reason is of essential importance. So we need to establish a pluralistic social epistemology system which includes reason and social factors.