Abstract

Epistemology has been socialised. Cognitive and social interactions between observers are now as important as their interventions into the course of nature. This contrasts with traditional views of how we get natural facts into our discourse about nature. These assumed the efficacy of individual observers’ causal interactions with the natural world, making their interactions with other observers irrelevant. Kant’s conclusion that empirical access depends also upon our concepts did not challenge the individualistic character of the epistemology of science. Observers’ agreement about their observations showed that each individual can have independent perceptual access to one and the same world.Historical and sociological studies of science show that social and procedural aspects of observation in the laboratory make an essential contribution to consensus about observations (see Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay (1983) and Gooding (1985a).