Steve Fuller: Knowledge, the philosophical quest in history

Abstract

Steve Fuller’s Knowledge is on the interplay of scientific knowledge and the human condition. Other than Fuller’s work, there is little discussion in the current literature in sociology of scientific knowledge, science and technology studies, sociology of science, philosophy of science, epistemology of science and analytic social epistemology on this interplay. The book provides provocative and controversial views on social epistemology of scientific knowledge in the history of epistemology which is construed widely as forms of knowledge in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences. The breadth of Fuller’s book is very wide. The book has six chapters with each chapter on a different version of epistemology and its history. Chapter 1 is on cognitive economics, and Chapter 2 is on divine psychology. Chapters 3–5 are extended discussions of the application of divine psychology to psychology of science, philosophy of science and sociology of science, respectively. Chapter 6 is on counterfactual historiography. This review