REPRESENTING NATURE - Making Sense of Nature - page 43

knowledge, ideas and experience impacts upon us at various points in our
lives. There are a great many of them. It seems to me unduly restrictive to
suppose that only highly credentialised and formally trained epistemic work-
ers should be the focus of our concern - important though these workers
undoubtedly are. It leads us to suppose that what really (or only) matters is
cognitive knowledge (which is simply untrue); it focuses our attention unduly
on information and knowledge in the conventional sense (e.g. things written
in scientific research papers or reported in news bulletins); and it may lead us
to ignore some of the 'alternative' communities who seek to shape our think-
ing and our lives (such as those advocating the idea of 'intelligent design' as
a critique of Darwin's widely accepted idea that species evolution is author-
less and 'blind'). Accordingly, in this topic the word 'epistemic' and its filial
terms cover a wide range of mental products andmedia rather than the narrow
philosophical focus on 'justified true belief '.
In my intentionally broad definition of the term, 'epistemic communi-
ties' can be deemed synonymous with 'knowledge communities' (though
I find the latter term, which has been used in the field of business and
organisational studies, somewhat bland) . 4 It also has filiations with the term
'communities of practice' (Lave and Wenger, 1991), which usefully reminds
us that knowledge is frequently created in order to have concrete effects and
definite uses. 5 I mean 'epistemic community' to cover everything from pro-
fessional counsellors to novelists to astronomers to advertising professionals
to journalists to guides offering tourists an 'outdoor experience'. Depending
on who we are and where we live, communities and sub-communities as
broad and diverse as these together routinely seek to shape our thoughts,
values, feelings and actions . 6 They're engaged in structured (though not
static) forms of communication that are directed outwards towards others
rather than just their epistemic peers.
Study Task: Out of the following topics, pick the one you think you know
the most about: future climate change/global warming; the ecological effects
of genetically modified (GM) foods; oceanic over-fishing; geoengineering
the climate; water resource scarcity; peak oil; experiments on live animals;
or carbon capture and storage. Now, think very carefully about precisely
where your knowledge of the topic has come from. Consider as well your
current beliefs about the topic. Whose epistemic claims have shaped your
beliefs? To what extent are these beliefs 'borrowed' from others who you've
chosen to believe? If you wanted to know more about any one of these
topics, what sources would you consult and why?
Some epistemic communities actively seek us out and clamour for our
attention, while we voluntarily go to others as occasion demands or oppor-
tunity arises. Some may strike us as being especially important (e.g. medical
doctors), while others may seem peripheral to our lives. Some aim to