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|Formulated Year=2016
|Academic Events=Scientonomy Seminar 2016,
|Prehistory==== Individual human beings ===For most of the history of western science and philosophy, human individuals were treated as the sole or primary epistemic agents. Discussion of the role of social interaction in the production of knowledge was confined largely to discussion of when one should accept the testimony of others. This took place, for example, in the works of [[David Hume]] (1711-1776) and [[Thomas Reid]] (1710-1796).[[CiteRef::Goldman and Blanchard (2016)]] Beginning in the nineteenth century, the concept that groups of interacting human individuals can function collectively as epistemic agents with a role distinct from their individual parts began to receive increasing attention.
=== Human groups ===The nineteenth century British philosopher and political economist [[John S. Mill|John Stuart Mill]] (1806-1873) argued, in a political essay called ''On Liberty'' (1859),[[CiteRef:: Mill (2003)]] that because individual human knowers are fallible, critical discussion of ideas between persons with differing views is necessary to help individuals avoid the falsity or partiality of beliefs framed in the context of only one point of view. For Mill, then, the achievement of knowledge is thus a social rather than an individual matter, and human groups can function as epistemic agents.[[CiteRef::Longino (2016a)]] The American philosopher and logician Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) emphasized the instigation of doubt and critical interaction within a community as means to knowledge. He formulated a consensual theory of truth, in which the acceptance of the truth of a proposition depends on the agreement of a community of inquirers, and that only reality can typically produce such agreement. For Peirce then, communities are epistemic agents that can take stances towards propositions.[[CiteRef::Peirce (1878)]][[CiteRef::Longino (2016a)]]
The epidemiologist [[Ludwik Fleck]] (1896-1961) made one of the first attempts to apply the concept of communities as epistemic agents specifically to the process of scientific change. In ''Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact'' (1935)[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]], he argued that cognition was necessarily a collective social activity, since it depends on prior knowledge obtained from other people. New ideas arise within collective epistemic agents which he called ''thought collectives''; groups of people who participate in the mutual exchange of ideas. As an emergent consequence of mutual understandings and misunderstandings within such a group, a particular ''thought style'' arises, which determines how individual members of the thought collective think and perceive within the relevant domain. Scientific facts are socially constructed by thought collectives interacting with the world through observation and experiment, and can be revised or abandoned based on these interactions.[[CiteRef::Fleck (1979)]][[CiteRef:: Sady (2016)]]
[[Karl Popper]] (1902-1994)[[CiteRef::Popper (1963)]][[CiteRef::Popper (1972)]] advocated a falsificationist view of theory assessment, and, like Pierce, stressed the importance of criticism in the production of knowledge. For Popper, members of a scientific community attempt to demonstrate the inadequacies of one another's theories by finding observational shortcomings or conceptual flaws. This is, necessarily, a community activity in which the community acts as an epistemic agent either accepting or rejecting a theory based on the outcome of such attempts. The outcome is that only the most empirically adequate and conceptually sound theories survive such community scrutiny. Since this process resembles that of biological evolution by natural selection, it is called evolutionary epistemology.[[CiteRef::Longino (2016a)]]
The role of social communities as epistemic agents was also stressed by [[Thomas Kuhn]] (1922-1996) in his ''The Structure of Scientific Revolutions''.[[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)]] Kuhn maintained that the work of a scientific community was united by adherence to a ''paradigm'' of shared beliefs, practices, and exemplars. The ''paradigm'' guided puzzle solving research to explain more phenomena in its terms. In the course of such research, anomalies may arise. Anomalies were phenomena that resisted explanation in terms of the theories, methods, and epistemic values that constituted the paradigm. Persistent anomalies could sometimes lead to a scientific revolution, in which the paradigm was displaced by a rival framework. [[CiteRef::Longino (2016a)]][[CiteRef::Bird (2013)]] For individual scientists, Kuhn stressed the non-rational aspects of paradigm choice, comparing it to a religious conversion experience or a gestalt shift. [[CiteRef::Kuhn (1962a)]] However, he later came to stress the role of shared epistemic values in paradigm choice by communities. [[CiteRef::Kuhn (1974)]] Sociologists of science placed a greater emphasis on the role of non-rational social factors, such as political and professional power structures, in the production of scientific knowledge than did Kuhn.[[CiteRef::Barnes (1977)]][[CiteRef::Shapin (1982)]][[CiteRef::Colins (1983)]] === Non-human animals === === Scientific Instruments ===
