在西方 ,尤其是英美等国 ,“社会认识论”这一术语最初是在图书馆学和经济学领域中提出来的。自 80年代 ,这一概念被引入哲学和社会学领域 ,很快地到 80年代末就正式发展成为一门相对独立的哲学分支学科 ,其主要标志是几部社会认识论研究专著的出版 ,例如英国学者安东尼·弗卢 In the West, especially in Britain and the United States, the term “social epistemology” was originally proposed in the field of library science and economics. Since the 1980s this concept was introduced into the fields of philosophy and sociology and soon formally evolved into a relatively independent philosophical branch by the late 1980s. Its main hallmark was the publication of several social epistemological monographs, such as the United Kingdom Scholar Anthony Flew