Abstract

Philosophers of science have become increasingly concerned with the social dimensions of scientific knowledge. The general aim of the paper is to show that approaches in social epistemology of science fail to take into account important changes that the organization of science has undergone in the past decades. I argue that the social organization of science is an important “social dimension” of scientific knowledge that philosophers need to consider. In order to do so, I focus on Helen Longino’s social epistemology of science as portrayed in her critical contextual empiricism. I show that Longino’s approach has important limitations when trying to implement it as a guide for current research through an evaluation of two of her norms of effective criticism.