The York Research Database

This paper assesses the account of the social role of the concept of knowledge implied by reductive, irreducibilist and genealogical accounts of the concept. It is argued that a point by point analogy between the knowledge system and a market economy suggests that the former, like the latter, is an instance of a mutual assurance game. On that basis only the genealogist can give an explanation of the concept of knowledge and its social – although this account is consistent with the position of those who claim the concept is not definable at all.