Definitions (Evolution)

by whitecraw, Tuesday, April 01, 2008, 09:19 (5862 days ago) @ George Jelliss

'Are these the sorts of communities whitecraw has in mind?' - Not really. They sound to me more like religious communities or communities of belief. 'Knowledge community' is an anthropological category that denotes any group which is bound together in its scientific practice (i.e. in its pursuit of knowledge) by a shared set of epistemological values. These values more often than not remain uncodified and uncodifiable, but are exemplified in some paradigmatic historical case or episode which becomes emblematic of the group and provides the group with (among other things) constitutive rules concerning what is to count as knowledge and the conditions that need to be fulfilled before anything can qualify as knowledge. - Each knowledge community characteristically is held by its members to be the only knowledge community, for the simple reason that they literally cannot (for obvious reasons) conceive any practice other than their own to be 'scientific'; i.e. pertaining to knowledge as such.