Epistemic community

An epistemic community may consist of those who accept one version of a story, or one version of validating a story. Michel Foucault referred more elaborately to mathesis as a rigorous episteme suitable for enabling cohesion of a discourse and thus uniting a community of its followers. In philosophy of science and systems science the process of forming a self-maintaining epistemic community is sometimes called a mindset. In politics, a tendency or faction is usually described in very similar terms.

In international anthropology and studies of global governance, epistemic communities are transnational networks of knowledge-based experts who define for decision-makers what the problems they face are, and what they should do about them.

Most researchersFact|date=March 2007 carefully distinguish between epistemic forms of community and "real" or "bodily" community which consists of people sharing risk, especially bodily risk.

As this view suggests, it is also difficult to draw the line between these modern ideas and more ancient ones: Joseph Campbell's concept of myth from cultural anthropology, Carl Jung's concept of archetype in psychology. Some consider forming an epistemic community a deep human need, and ultimately a mythical or even religious obligation. Among these very notably are E. O. Wilson and Ellen Dissanayake, an American historian of aesthetics, who famously argued that almost all of our broadly shared conceptual metaphors centre on one basic idea of safety, that of "home".

From this view, an epistemic community may be seen as a group of people who do not have any specific history together, but search for a common idea of home, e.g. as if forming an intentional community.

References

Willard, Charles Arthur. Liberalism and the Problem of Knowledge: A New Rhetoric for Modern Democracy, University of Chicago Press, 1996.