Mike asked:

What is meant by "knowledge is socially constructed"? and how can this change over time?

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You can't knowsomething if it isn't true. Whatever else, 'knowledge' might imply, it implies that we
take something to be the case, and what we take to be the case isthe case, in other words, is true.

But what does it take to make something true? Do truths exist in a timeless reality, waiting for us to
discover them? Or are some of the things we call 'truths' merely a product of the way we think, or
rather, the way human beings have thought at a particular historical period? Like houses and cities,
on this view, the 'truths' that human beings take themselves to know are constructedand, in time,
pulled down again.— Could thatbe true?

To some extent, what I would say here is the same as I said, below, in my 'second opinion' on R.E.
Lee's question about the argument against relativism. But it seems to me that in the 'social
construction' theory of knowledge there is more going on than simply the claim that truth is relative to
a society, or to a historical period.

First, one has to notice that not all forms of knowledge appear equally suitable candidates for a social
constructivist account. It is a plain fact that either Caesar did, or did not, cross the Rubicon (as I
remember vaguely from my history lessons at school). On the other hand, the question whyhe did is
a matter for historians to argue over. One of the things that characterize a given society in a given
historical period is the way it views its own history. The way certain historical facts are common
knowledge, seen to be unquestionably true.

It is when knowledge is implicated in self-understanding that the claim about knowledge being socially
constructed appears most tempting. What we are depends partly on what we understand ourselves to
be, the way we view where we have come from and where we are going.

Here is an example which I have used before. When Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher notoriously
said, 'There is no such thing as Society', her words reflected a reality that had come about because of
the prevailing attitude towards social issues that kept the Conservative party in power. Where there
had been 'Society', there was no more. This attitude was supported by a certain view of history. A
critic of Thatcher would say that it was a distorted view. But it was not wholly false either.

As individuals we tell, and re-tell the story of our own lives in response to changes in our
circumstances. We are always striving to create a coherent narrative, to impose our will on the chaos
of events. The same thing is true on a social level. Whether you believe in the existence of such a
thing as 'Society' with a capital 'S' or don't believe it, whether or not Society is itself one of the things
that is 'socially constructed', we are individually and collectively constructors of our own 'truths', our
own 'knowledge'.

Geoffrey Klempner