Present and Future Concerns
At this stage, both varieties of social epistemology remain largely "academic" or "theoretical" projects. But both emphasise the social significance of knowledge and therefore the cultural value of social epistemology itself. Both journals, for example, welcome papers that include a policy dimension. More practical applications of social epistemology can be found in the areas of library science, academic publishing, knowledge policy and debates over the role over the Internet in knowledge transmission and creation.
Read more about this topic: Social Epistemology
Famous quotes containing the words present, future and/or concerns:
“At present the globe goes with a shattered constitution in its orbit.... No doubt the simple powers of nature, properly directed by man, would make it healthy and a paradise; as the laws of man’s own constitution but wait to be obeyed, to restore him to health and happiness.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If the children and youth of a nation are afforded opportunity to develop their capacities to the fullest, if they are given the knowledge to understand the world and the wisdom to change it, then the prospects for the future are bright. In contrast, a society which neglects its children, however well it may function in other respects, risks eventual disorganization and demise.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“Science asks no questions about the ontological pedigree or a priori character of a theory, but is content to judge it by its performance; and it is thus that a knowledge of nature, having all the certainty which the senses are competent to inspire, has been attained—a knowledge which maintains a strict neutrality toward all philosophical systems and concerns itself not with the genesis or a priori grounds of ideas.”
—Chauncey Wright (1830–1875)