The Use of Modelling in the Analysis of Discourse about Scientific Knowledge (Social Epistemology as a Non-Classic One)

Abstract

In the recent time, the philosophical interpretation of the structure of scientific knowledge and its development has undergone significant changes. As is generally known, in the philosophy of the last quarter of the 20th century one can distinguish, alongside with the historic and the linguistic ones, the sociological turn. This makes necessary an analysis of the latest trends in the non-classic epistemology viewed in their dynamics and their opposition to the earlier style of thinking (the classic epistemology). The paper proposes a speculative model of opposition of the two schools of thought, the classic and non-classic epistemology. It is then examined to what extent this model is apt to describe the actual concepts by social epistemologists taken as empirical individuals (by way of example, the theories by David Bloor, Alvin Goldman and Helen Longino were chosen for the analysis).