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|Prehistory=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.
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. The For Mill, then, the achievement of knowledge is thus a social rather than an individual matter. [[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. For Peirce then, communities are epistemic agents that can take stances towards propositions. [[CiteRef::Peirce (1878)]][[CiteRef::Longino (2016a)]]
The epidemiologist [[Ludwig Fleck|Ludwig 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)]]
