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THEORY
OF KNOWLEDGE
(INC. CONSTRUCTIVISM / DISCOURSE / HISTORIOGRAPHY OF IDEAS / HISTORIOGRAPHY OF PHILOSOPHY /
INTELLECTUAL HISTORIOGRAPHY / RHETORIC OF INQUIRY / SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE)
I use the term Theory of Knowledge to
refer to approaches that emphasise the socio-historical context and rhetoric
of knowledge production in all its forms.
Contextualism
refers to the view that a particular truth-claim can only be understood in
relation to the social and historical context
in which it is uttered.
Constructivism is the view that views
all of our knowledge as 'constructed,' i.e. it does not necessarily reflect
any external 'transcendent' realities but is, rather, contingent upon
convention, human perception, and social experience. Social constructionism
is the view, derived from Hegel and
developed by Durkheim, that all knowledge is 'constructed,' that is,
not necessarily reflective of external reality. Knowledge is,
rather, to at least some degree contingent upon paradigms inherited from social experience and conventional practice.
A social construct is an idea which may appear to be natural and
obvious to those who accept it, but in reality is an invention or artifact
of a particular culture or society. Subjectivism is the tenet that
one's subjective
experiences are fundamental to all truth-claims. In an extreme
form, it may hold that the nature and existence of every object
depends only on someone's subjective awareness of it. Relativism is the view that statements or propositions are true
only in relation to some standard, convention, or point-of-view, such
as that of one's own culture.
In the social sciences, a discourse is
considered to be an institutionalized way of thinking, a social boundary
defining what can be said about a specific topic and, thus, what can be
taken as the truth. Discourse affects our views on all things, both defining
the referent which one seeks to know and fashioning the subjectivity of the
would-be knower. Discourse analysis is a general term for a
number of approaches to analyzing particular examples of
language use (linguistic units composed of several
sentences in the form of writing, speech, conversation,
argument, etc.) or, more broadly, interrogating
institutionalized ways of thinking, socially-derived
boundaries defining what can be claimed to be true about
a specific topic. Critical Discourse Analysis
studies language as a form of social practice and
focuses on the ways social and political domination is
reproduced (or subverted) by both text and talk.
The History of Ideas deals with the
expression, preservation, and change of ideas over time. Intellectual History
refers to the history of the people who create, discuss, write about and
in other ways propagate ideas (i.e. history of intellectuals and the
socio-historical contexts in which they live). It assumes that ideas
do not change in isolation from the people who create and use them and that
one must study the culture, lives and environments of people to understand
their notions and ideas. The History of
Philosophy studies the
expression, preservation, and change of philosophical ideas and
concepts through time. Some questions posed include: How do philosophical
ideas per se differ from other kinds of ideas? How can changes in
philosophical ideas be accounted for historically? What drives the
development of philosophical ideas in its historical context? To what
degree can philosophical texts from prior historical eras even be understood
today? Historiography refers to the study of the writing of
history with particular reference to the style of writing, the methods of
interpretation and the tools of investigation employed.
Rhetoric of Inquiry refers to the view
that the production of knowledge is unavoidably shaped by the rhetorical
structures of the discourses employed.
The Sociology of knowledge is the study of the social origins of
ideas as well as of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies.
Symbolic anthropology
(or more broadly, symbolic and interpretive
anthropology) is a diverse set of approaches
within cultural anthropology that view culture
as a symbolic system that arises primarily from
human interpretations of the world.
A Worldview is a term calqued
from the
German Weltanschauung meaning a 'look onto the world'
(literally, 'wide worldview' or 'wide world perception'). It refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through
which an individual or a community interprets the
world. This worldview is a function of the
language of the people in question, to be precise, its
syntactic structures and untranslatable
connotations and its
denotations.
SUB-PAGES
Philosophers / Theorists:
Related Resources:
ASSOCIATIONS
CONFERENCES
2008:
- Qualia: Thinking the Senses, Institute of Advanced Study,
University of Durham, March 28-30
2007:
-
Varieties of Experience: Views of the Two World Wars / Regards
croisés sur les deux guerres mondiales, University of Caen, November
29-30
-
Modes of Cognition: Poetic and Speculative Thinking, Department
of Philosophy, University of Dundee, November 16
-
Ideas Changing History, Human Development and
Capability Association (HDCA), Graduate Program in International
Affairs, New School, September 16-20
-
Beyond Reasonable Doubt, University of Cambridge, September 7-9
-
Transnational Concepts, Transfers and the Challenge of the Peripheries,
Tenth Annual International Conference on Conceptual History,
History of Political and Social Concepts Group, Istanbul, Turkey, August
30-September 2
-
Experience and Experiences, 13th International Philosophy Colloquium
Evian, Evian, July 15-21
-
Epistemologies / Pedagogies of Struggle: Knowledge(s)
Outside the Academy, Society for Socialist Studies, University of
Saskatchewan, May 30-June 2
-
The Flaw, Department of French Studies, Queen's
University, May 25-27
-
Speculative Realism, Goldsmiths College, University of
London, April 27
-
Models of
Intellectual History, International Society for Intellectual
History, Birkbeck College, University of London, April 17-20
-
Inside Knowledge: (Un)doing Methodologies, Imagining
Alternatives, Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA), University
of Amsterdam, March 28-30
2006:
-
Evolutions, School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures,
University of Edinburgh, September 22-23
-
Crossroads: Writing Conceptual History Beyond the Nation-State,
Ninth Annual International Conference on
Conceptual History, History of Political and Social Concepts
Group, University of Uppsala, Sweden, August
24-26
-
'Subject' and 'Object': from the European Dictionary of
Untranslatable Terms, Centre for Research in Modern European
Philosophy, Middlesex University, April 6
-
Philosophy and Historiography, British Society for the History
of Philosophy, Robinson College, University of Cambridge, April 3-5
2005:
-
Worlds in Discourse -- Representations of Realities, School of
Language Studies and Linguistics, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, November
21-23
-
Object and Space: Phenomenology of Object, Form and Thing
from XIV to XVII Century, Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, University of
Perugia, September 8-10
-
Material Cultures and the Creation
of Knowledge, Centre
for the History of the Book, University of Edinburgh, July
22-24
2004:
2003:
-
Rhetoric and Conceptual Change, Fourth Annual
Conference of the Tampere, Finland, June 28-30
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Sixth Annual Conference on the History of Concepts,
History of Political and Social Concepts Group, Bilbao, June 30-July 2
-
The
Mystery of Capital and the Construction of Social Reality,
Department of Philosophy, State University of New York, Buffalo, April 12-15
-
Teaching New
Histories of Philosophy, Princeton University, April 4-6
2002:
-
Fifth Annual Conference on the History of Concepts, History of
Political and Social Concepts Group, University of Amsterdam, June 18-21
2001:
2000:
-
Concepts of Democracy, Third Annual Conference on
Conceptual History, History of Political and Social Concepts Group,
Institute of Political Science, University of Copenhagen, October 19-21
Annual:
COURSES
JOURNALS
(See also journals listed on History
of Thought) SOURCES: PRIMARY Book Series:
-
U of Chicago P: New Practices of Enquiry (1990-1999).
Ed. Deirdre McCloskey, et al.
-
Sage: Inquiries in Social Constructionism
-
Wisconsin UP: The Rhetoric of Inquiry. Ed. Deidre
McCloskey, et al.
Off-Line:
Selected Individual Works:
On-Line:
SOURCES: SECONDARY
Off-Line:
Selected
Individual Works:
On-Line:
-
General:
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BBC Radio 4:
Relativism
-
Cobern, William W.:
Worldview,
Metaphysics and Epistemology
-
Heylighen, F.:
What is a World View?
-
Olsen, Marvin E., Dora G. Lodwick, and Riley E. Dunlap:
Worldviews - Theoretical Framework
-
Roach, John:
Chinese, Americans Truly See Things Differenly National
Geographic News August 22, 2005
-
Westacott, Emrys:
Cognitive Relativism
(Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
-
Wikipedia Encyclopedia:
-
Constructivism:
-
Discourse Analysis:
-
Historiography of Ideas / Intellectual
Historiography:
-
Holborn, Hajo:
The
History of Ideas Royal York Hotel, Toronto, Canada, December 29,
1967. Pub. in American Historical Review 73:3 (1968): 683-95
-
Popkin, Richard H.:
Skepticism in Modern Thought
Dictionary of the History of Ideas
-
Roberts, David D.:
Nothing but History:
Reconstruction and Extremity after Metaphysics
-
Thoemmes
Encyclopedia of the History of Ideas
-
Wiener, Philip:
Dictionary of the
History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
Historiography of Philosophy:
Rhetoric of Inquiry:
Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology:
Sociology of
Knowledge:
Symbolic Anthropology:
UNIVERSITY PROGRAMMES / RESEARCH CENTRES / RESEARCH
PROJECTS
Europe:
USA:
WWW GATEWAYS
- Constructivism:
- Discourse Analysis:
- Historiography
of Ideas / Intellectual Historiography:
- Historiography of Philosophy:
- Rhetoric of Inquiry:
- Symbolic and Interpretive Anthropology:
- Sociology of
Knowledge:
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This site will always be a work in progress
as a result of which pages will be found at various stages of
completion.