Analytic social epistemology refers to the version of social epistemology pursued in the Anglophone analytic philosophical tradition. Indeed, the very phrase “social epistemology” reflects both the particular philosophical tradition and its mother tongue. The phrase was coined by the epistemologist Fred Schmitt in a special issue of the old logical positivist (see kuhn, popper and logical positivism) journal Synthese in 1987, the same year Steve Fuller founded the journal Social Epistemology. That analytic philosophy – as opposed to one of the continental European schools – originated “social epistemology” as a phrase simply reflects that accounts of knowledge in the other traditions already presuppose a social dimension, which would make social epistemology superfluous. For example, from the nineteenth century onward, epistemologies descended from French positivism and German idealism have consistently stressed the systematic and collective character of knowledge. In contrast, analytic philosophy has remained wedded to the Cartesian individual – now occasionally presented as Darwinian – as the paradigm case of the knower. In that respect, “social epistemology” is designed to redress the individualist bias of analytic philosophical accounts of knowledge.

“Social epistemology” is equally an artefact of the English language. In English, “knowledge” is simply a nominalization of the verb “to know”, which covers in an undifferentiated fashion the semantic space that in the other major Indo-European languages – ranging from Greek and Latin to French and German – would be divided more clearly between two distinct sets of words: one set stressing the internal process of knowing – that is, “consciousness” or “cognition” – and another set stressing the external products of knowing – that is, “discipline” or “science”.