Histoire des idées, sociologie des croyances et processus argumentatifs scepticisme et modernité d’après Richard H. Popkin

This paper claims to show the relevance of the classical book by Richard H. Popkin from the point of view of a sociological and anthropological analysis of the collective processes of doubt and assent. This examination implies, however, that we analyse the fine differences between the history of ideas, the sociology of knowledge, the ethnology of beliefs and epistemology. The examination deserves to be carried out as well for the understanding of the increase of scepticism in the 17th century as for the spread of the wave of contemporary relativism. The latter certainly has to be distinguished, as Popkin suggests, from a form of moderate scepticism close to critical rationalism.