Social Dimensions of Epistemological Disputes: The Case of Literary Theory

Abstract

Epistemological reflection has been a major source of innovation in the human sciences while having very little influence on the arts or sciences. This variation is explained using a sociological framework emphasizing the organizational forms that underpin or are implicit in epistemological positions. The fine arts and the harder sciences are, respectively, too weakly and too strongly organized to be open to epistemological influence. By contrast, the human sciences might plausibly be organized either more loosely or more tightly, and epistemological argument is used in part to urge movement in one or the other direction. This perspective is applied to the academic study of literature both historically and in relation to a current epistemological dispute between realist and relativist scholars. The argument is unresolvable in practice, it is argued, because of constraints on scholarly interpretation set by consumers. Parallels are drawn with circumstances in sociology.