The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies. (Compare history of ideas.) // Foundations The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism Max Weber Die protestantische Ethik und der Geist des Kapitalismus, 1904 Online version Description: In The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Weber puts forward a thesis that Puritan ethic and ideas had influenced the development of capitalism. ... This is a list of terms in sociology. ... The history of ideas is a field of research in history that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human ideas over time. ...

The term first came into widespread use in the 1920s, when a number of German-speaking sociologists wrote extensively on it, notably Max Scheler, and Karl Mannheim with Ideology and Utopia. With the dominance of functionalism through the middle years of the 20th century, the sociology of knowledge tended to remain on the periphery of mainstream sociological thought. It was largely reinvented and applied much more closely to everyday life in the 1960s, particularly by Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann in The Social Construction of Reality (1966) and is still central for methods dealing with qualitative understanding of human society (compare socially constructed reality). This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ... Max Scheler (August 22, 1874, Munich - May 19, 1928, Frankfurt am Main) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. ... Karl Mannheim (March 27, 1893, Budapest - January 9, 1947, London) was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology. ... In the social sciences, specifically sociology and sociocultural anthropology, functionalism (also called functional analysis) is a sociological paradigm that originally attempted to explain social institutions as collective means to fill individual biological needs. ... Peter Ludwig Berger (born March 17, 1929) is an American sociologist well known for his work The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York, 1966). ... Thomas Luckmann (b. ... The book The Social Construction of Reality was a classic text in the sociology of knowledge written by Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann and published in 1966. ... Socially constructed reality forms a concept within the sociology of knowledge and the social constructionist strand of postmodernism. ...

Although very influential within modern sociology, the sociology of knowledge can claim its most significant impact on science more generally through its contribution to debate and understanding of the nature of science itself, most notably through the work of Thomas Kuhn in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (see also: paradigm). Thomas Samuel Kuhn (July 18, 1922 – June 17, 1996) was an American intellectual who wrote extensively on the history of science and developed several important notions in the philosophy of science. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Since the late 1960s, the word paradigm (IPA: ) has referred to a thought pattern in any scientific discipline or other epistemological context. ...

Schools

Karl Mannheim

Main article: Karl Mannheim

The German political philosophers Karl Marx (1818–1883) and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) argued in Die Deutsche Ideologie (1846, German Ideology) and elsewhere that people's ideologies, including their social and political beliefs and opinions, are rooted in their class interests, and more generally in the social and economic circumstances in which they live: "It is men, who in developing their material inter-course, change, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life" (Marx-Engels Gesamtausgabe 1/5). Karl Mannheim (March 27, 1893, Budapest - January 9, 1947, London) was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology. ... Karl Heinrich Marx (May 5, 1818 – March 14, 1883) was a German philosopher, political economist, and revolutionary. ... Friedrich Engels (November 28, 1820, Wuppertal – August 5, 1895, London), a 19th-century German political philosopher, developed communist theory alongside his better-known collaborator, Karl Marx, co-authoring The Communist Manifesto (1848). ... Political Ideologies Part of the Politics series Politics Portal This box:      An ideology is an organized collection of ideas. ... Social class refers to the hierarchical distinctions between individuals or groups in societies or cultures. ...

Under the influence of this doctrine, and of Phenomenology, the Hungarian-born German sociologist Karl Mannheim (1893–1947) gave impetus to the growth of the sociology of knowledge with his Ideologie und Utopie (1929, translated and extended in 1936 as Ideology and Utopia), although the term had been introduced five years earlier by the co-founder of the movement, the German philosopher and social theorist Max Scheler (1874–1928), in Versuche zu einer Soziologie des Wissens (1924, Attempts at a Sociology of Knowledge). Mannheim feared that this interpretation could be seen to claim that all knowledge and beliefs are the products of socio-political forces since this form of relativism is self-defeating (if it is true, then it too is merely a product of socio-political forces and has no claim to truth and no persuasive force). Mannheim believed that relativism was a strange mixture of modern and ancient beliefs in that it contained within itself a belief in an absolute truth which was true for all times and places (the ancient view most often associated with Plato) and condemned other truth claims because they could not achieve this level of objectivity (an idea gleaned from Marx). Mannheim sought to escape this problem with the idea of 'relationism'. This is the idea that certain things are true only in certain times and places (a view influenced by pragmatism) however, this does not make them less true. Mannheim felt that a stratum of free-floating intellectuals (whom he claimed were only loosely anchored to the class structure of society) could most perfectly realise this form of truth by creating a "dynamic synthesis" of the ideologies of other groups. This article is about the philosophical movement. ... Karl Mannheim (March 27, 1893, Budapest - January 9, 1947, London) was a Jewish Hungarian-born sociologist, influential in the first half of the 20th century and one of the founding fathers of classical sociology. ... Max Scheler (August 22, 1874, Munich - May 19, 1928, Frankfurt am Main) was a German philosopher known for his work in phenomenology, ethics, and philosophical anthropology. ... Compare Moral relativism, Aesthetic relativism, Social constructionism and Cultural relativism. ... PLATO was one of the first generalized Computer assisted instruction systems, originally built by the University of Illinois (U of I) and later taken over by Control Data Corporation (CDC), who provided the machines it ran on. ... Marx is a common German surname. ... Pragmatism is a philosophic school that originated in the late nineteenth century with Charles Sanders Peirce, who first stated the pragmatic maxim. ...

See also: epistemology, sociology. It has been suggested that Meta-epistemology be merged into this article or section. ... This article or section includes a list of works cited or a list of external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks in-text citations. ...

Phenomenological sociology

Based on the work of Edmund Husserl's philosophical phenomenology, Alfred Schütz proposed a micro-sociological approach also known as social phenomenology. Schütz looked at the way in which ordinary members of society constitute and reconstitute the world in which they live; life world. Edmund Gustav Albrecht Husserl (April 8, 1859, ProstÄ›jov – April 26, 1938, Freiburg) was a German philosopher, known as the father of phenomenology. ... Alfred Schütz (1899-1959, aka Alfred Schutz) was a philosopher and sociologist. ...

For Schütz, it was important to bracket one's taken-for-granted assumptions about the life in order to properly understand the life world of those being researched. For technical reasons, :) and some similar combinations starting with : redirect here. ...

See: Holstein, J. A., & Gubrium, J. F. (1994). Phenomenology, ethnomethodology, and interpretive practice. In N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (Eds.), The handbook of qualitative research (1st ed., pp. 262-272). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Michel Foucault

Main article: Michel Foucault

A particularly important strain of the sociology of knowledge is the criticism by Michel Foucault. In Madness and Civilization, 1961, he argued that conceptions of madness and what was considered "reason" or "knowledge" was itself subject to major culture bias - in this respect mirroring similar criticisms by Thomas Szasz, at the time the foremost critic of psychiatry, and himself now an eminent psychiatrist. A point where Foucault and Szasz agreed was that sociological processes played the major role in defining "madness" as an "illness" and prescribing "cures". Michel Foucault (IPA pronunciation: ) (October 15, 1926 – June 25, 1984) was a French philosopher and historian. ... Michel Foucault Michel Foucault (October 15, 1926 – June 26, 1984) was a French philosopher and held a chair at the Collège de France, a chair to which he gave the title The History of Systems of Thought. His writings have had an enormous impact on other scholarly work: Foucault... Year 1961 (MCMLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Cultural bias is interpreting and judging phenomena in terms particular to ones own culture. ... Thomas Szasz. ... Psychiatry is a branch of medicine dealing with the prevention, assessment, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of the mind and mental illness. ...

In The Birth of the Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception, 1963, Foucault extended his critique to all of modern scientific medicine, arguing for the central conceptual metaphor of "The Gaze", which had implications for medical education, prison design, and the carceral state as understood today. Concepts of criminal justice and its intersection with medicine were better developed in this work than in Szasz and others, who confined their critique to current psychiatric practice. Year 1963 (MCMLXIII) was a common year starting on Tuesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Conceptual metaphor: In cognitive linguistics, metaphor is defined as understanding one conceptual domain in terms of another conceptual domain; for example, using one persons life experience to understand a different persons experience. ... The medical gaze is a term coined by French philosopher and critic, Michel Foucault in his 1976 book, The Birth of the Clinic, to denote the often-dehumanizing method by which medical professionals separate the body from the person (see mind-body dualism). ... Medical education is education related to the practice of being a medical practitioner, either the initial training to become a doctor or further training thereafter. ... For the 1988 film called Prison, see Prison (1988 film). ... A carceral state is a state modelled on a prison. ... Criminal justice system flowchart Criminal Justice refers to the system used by government to maintain social control, prevent crime, enforce laws, and administer justice. ...

Finally, in The Order of Things, 1966, and The Archaeology of Knowledge, 1969, Foucault introduced the abstract notions of mathesis and taxonomia. These, he claimed, had transformed 17th and 18th century studies of "general grammar" into modern "linguistics", "natural history" into modern "biology", and "analysis of wealth" into modern "economics". Not, claimed Foucault, without loss of meaning. The 19th century had transformed what knowledge was. The Order of Things (Les Mots et les choses) is a book written by Michel Foucault and was published in 1966. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... The Archaeology of Knowledge (LArchéologie du Savoir) is a book written by Michel Foucault and was published in 1969. ... For the Stargate SG-1 episode, see 1969 (Stargate SG-1). ... Linguistics is the scientific study of language, which can be theoretical or applied. ... Table of natural history, 1728 Cyclopaedia Natural history is an umbrella term for what are now often viewed as several distinct scientific disciplines of integrative organismal biology. ... This article does not cite any references or sources. ... Wealth usually refers to money and property. ... This article needs additional references or sources for verification. ...

Perhaps Foucault's best-known and most controversial claim was that before the 18th century, "Man did not exist". The notions of humanity and of humanism were inventions or creations of this 19th century transformation. Accordingly, a cognitive bias had been introduced unwittingly into science, by over-trusting the individual doctor or scientist's ability to see and state things objectively. This study still guides the sociology of knowledge and has been claimed to have sparked single-handedly much of postmodernism. Humanism[1] is a broad category of ethical philosophies that affirm the dignity and worth of all people, based on the ability to determine right and wrong by appeal to universal human qualities—particularly rationality. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... The term Postmodernism (sometimes abbreviated Pomo[1]) was coined in 1949 to describe a dissatisfaction with modern architecture, founding the postmodern architecture. ...

Bruno Latour

Main article: Bruno Latour

Bruno Latour is a French sociologist of science best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, describing the process of scientific research from the perspective of social construction based on field observations of working scientists. Bruno Latour Bruno Latour (born June 1947, Beaune, France) is a French sociologist of science best known for his books We Have Never Been Modern, Laboratory Life, and Science in Action, describing the process of scientific research from the perspective of social construction based on field observations of working scientists. ... Sociology of science is the subfield of sociology that deals with the practice of science. ... A social construction, social construct or social concept is an institutionalized entity or artifact in a social system invented or constructed by participants in a particular culture or society that exists because people agree to behave as if it exists, or agree to follow certain conventional rules, or behave as...

The sociology of mathematical knowledge

Studies of mathematical practice and quasi-empiricism in mathematics are also rightly part of the sociology of knowledge, since they focus on the community of those who practice mathematics and their common assumptions. Since Eugene Wigner raised the issue in 1960 and Hilary Putnam made it more rigorous in 1975, the question of why fields such as physics and mathematics should agree so well has been debated. Proposed solutions point out that the fundamental constituents of mathematical thought, space, form-structure, and number-proportion are also the fundamental constituents of physics. It is also worthwhile to note that physics is nothing but a modeling of reality, and seeing causal relationships governing repeatable observed phenomena, and much of mathematics, especially in relation to the growth of the calculus, has been developed precisely for the goal of developing these models in a rigorous fashion. Another approach is to suggest that there is no deep problem, that the division of human scientific thinking through using words such as 'mathematics' and 'physics' is only useful in their practical everyday function to categorify and distinguish. In the philosophy of mathematics, mathematical practice is used to distinguish the working practices of professional mathematicians (eg. ... Quasi-empiricism in mathematics is the movement in the philosophy of mathematics to direct philosophers attention to mathematical practice, in particular, relations with physics and social sciences, rather than the foundations problem in mathematics. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... Eugene Wigner Eugene Paul Wigner (Hungarian Wigner Pál Jenő) (November 17, 1902 – January 1, 1995) was a Hungarian physicist and mathematician who received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1963 for his contributions to the theory of the atomic nucleus and the elementary particles, particularly through the discovery and... Year 1960 (MCMLX) was a leap year starting on Friday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Hilary Whitehall Putnam (born July 31, 1926) is an American philosopher who has been a central figure in Western philosophy since the 1960s, especially in philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. ... Year 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... A magnet levitating above a high-temperature superconductor demonstrates the Meissner effect. ... Euclid, Greek mathematician, 3rd century BC, as imagined by by Raphael in this detail from The School of Athens. ... Calculus (from Latin, pebble or little stone) is a mathematical subject that includes the study of limits, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series, and constitutes a major part of modern university education. ...

Fundamental contributions to the sociology of mathematical knowledge have been made by Sal Restivo and David Bloor. Restivo draws upon the work of scholars such as Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the West, 1926), Raymond L. Wilder and Lesley A. White, as well as contemporary sociologists of knowledge and science studies scholars. David Bloor draws upon Ludwig Wittgenstein and other contemporary thinkers. They both claim that mathematical knowledge is socially constructed and has irreducible contingent and historical factors woven into it. More recently Paul Ernest has proposed a social constructivist account of mathematical knowledge, drawing on the works of both of these sociologists. Sal Restivo is a leading contributor to science studies and in particular to the sociology of mathematical knowledge. ... David Bloor is the director of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh (see Edinburgh School). ... Oswald Arnold Gottfried Spengler (Blankenburg am Harz May 29, 1880 – May 8, 1936, Munich) was a German historian and philosopher, although his studies ranged throughout mathematics, science, philosophy, history, and art. ... David Bloor is the director of the Science Studies Unit at the University of Edinburgh (see Edinburgh School). ... Wittgenstein and Hitler in school photograph taken at the Linz Realschule in 1903. ... Paul Ernest He is a recent contributor to the social constructivist philosophy of mathematics. ...

See also

• Sociology of scientific knowledge
• Knowledge Management
• Knowledge