THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE AND ITS MOVEMENTS

The sociology of knowledge that became established as an academic discipline ‘lives’ alongside another that never did so, but nevertheless manifests itself within other disciplines, including the philosophy of science, the history of science, and intellectual history. I discuss the ways in which each of them has evolved. I argue that while the former works by reflecting on the conditions of possibility of the production of knowledge about knowledge itself, the nature of the knowledge produced under these conditions, the metatheoretical ‘dilemmas’ that supposedly plague the production of this knowledge, the means by which these dilemmas can be ‘overcome,’ the conceptual problems supposedly involved in the production of this knowledge, and the ways through which these conceptual problems can be solved, the latter works by offering solutions to specific empirical problems.