The sociology of knowledge and its enemies

My objective in the following study is to present and analyze the objections to the ‘classical argument’ in the sociology of knowledge raised by Leo Strauss and Karl Popper. Building on this expository account, I will attempt to demonstrate (1) that the opposition of Strauss and Popper is more apparent and polemical than real, (2) that the position taken by Strauss and Popper on the viability of a sociology of knowledge is essentially no different from that taken by the discipline's founders: Max Scheler, Karl Mannheim, and Georg Lukács, (3) that whatever the merits of Strauss and Popper's contentions, they become relevant only in the context of a radicalized version of the sociology of knowledge which developed subsequent to their formulation, and (4) that the sociology of knowledge has needlessly and deplorably become the battleground for meta‐theoretical disputes that are irrelevant to its practice.     

Durkheim's sociology of scientific knowledge

Durkheim's thinking on scientific knowledge reveals several contradictions, resulting from the relativist implications of his substantive theory of culture and the positivist assumptions of his metatheoretical definition of scientific methods in sociology. In his explanations of historical and cross-cultural differences in „truthful”︁ representations of reality, Durkheim suggests that logical and conceptual structures of knowledge are determined by social morphology, and that the validity of any truth-claim is limited to cultural contexts in which designated criteria of validation are normatively maintained. However, in epistemological works such as The Rules, Durkheim suggests that social factors are of little importance in constructing scientific knowledge, and that truths of science mirror external reality and so their validity transcends cultural boundaries.     

科学知识社会学相对主义知识观批判

“The Strong Programme” is put forward as a metaphysical theory of sociology by the Edinburgh School (SSK) to study the social causes of knowledge. Barry Barnes and David Bloor are the proponents of the School. They call their programme “the Relativist View of Knowledge” and argue against rationalism in the philosophy of science. Does their relativist account of knowledge present a serious challenge to rationalism, which has dominated 20th century philosophy of science? I attempt to answer this question by criticizing the main ideas of SSK and defending rationalism theories in modern philosophy of science.     

On surrender, death, and the sociology of knowledge

Surrender-and-catch is a protest against [... our time] and an attempt at remembrance of what a human being can be. The sociology of knowledge is a protest against its hypocrisy and against unexamined social influences. Like surrender, the sociology of knowledge does not fear but passionately seeks what is true and thus, like surrender, is a remembrance, proclamation, and celebration of the spirit. Both ideas, that of the sociology of knowledge and that of surrender, are critical, polemical, radical [...]; so is the sociology of knowledge also in its practice, while in its practice surrender is cognitive live. Using a [...] distinction developed by Mannheim, we may also say that the sociology of knowledge is an extrinsic interpretation of its time, our time; surrender, an intrinsic one: the former is, advocates, and practices such an extrinsic (sociological) interpretation but needs the latter to overcome the relativism it encounters in its practice by its remembrance, rediscovery, reinvention, the catch, of what is common to all human beings, what is universally human (Wolff, 1982., pp. 265–266).     

On surrender,death, and the sociology of knowledge

Surrender-and-catch is a protest against [... our time] and an attempt at remembrance of what a human being can be. The sociology of knowledge is a protest against its hypocrisy and against unexamined social influences. Like surrender, the sociology of knowledge does not fear but passionately seeks what is true and thus, like surrender, is a remembrance, proclamation, and celebration of the spirit. Both ideas, that of the sociology of knowledge and that of surrender, are critical, polemical, radical [...]; so is the sociology of knowledge also in its practice, while in its practice surrender is cognitive live. Using a [...] distinction developed by Mannheim, we may also say that the sociology of knowledge is an extrinsic interpretation of its time, our time; surrender, an intrinsic one: the former is, advocates, and practices such an extrinsic (sociological) interpretation but needs the latter to overcome the relativism it encounters in its practice by its remembrance, rediscovery, reinvention, the catch, of what is common to all human beings, what is universally human (Wolff, 1982., pp. 265–266).     

Conventionalism,scientific discovery and the sociology of knowledge*

In this paper the basic aim of the so‐called ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of knowledge is examined. The ‘strong programme’ is considered (and rightly so) as an extreme version of the anti‐realist view of science. While the problem of scientific realism has normally been dealt with from the point of view of the ‘context of justification’ of theories, the paper focuses on the issues raised by law‐discovery. In this context Herbert Simon's views about the existence of a ‘logic of scientific discovery’ are discussed and criticized. The main thesis of the paper is that if the structure of both discovery and prediction is properly understood, then the basic anti‐realist claims become untenable. A fortiori, the ‘strong programme’ appears to be unable to explain some basic features of the structure of science.     

The sociology of sociobiology

This paper turns the tables on the criticisms of sociobiology that stem from a sociological perspective; many of those criticisms lack cogency and coherence in such measure as to demand, in their turn, a psycho‐sociological explanation rather than a rational justification. This thesis, after a brief exposition of the main ideas of sociobiology, is argued in terms of four of the most prominent complaints made against it. Far from embodying tired prejudices about the psychological and sociological implications of biology, sociobiology actually reverses a number of naive assumptions about the consequences of natural selection. I surmise that what really provokes the critics of sociobiology is a certain philosophical relevance of sociobiology both in the broad sense (the application of natural selection principles to behaviour) and in the narrow sense (the insistence on the centrality of certain mechanisms, such as gene selection). In both cases, taking biology seriously affects our philosophical vision of the nature of human beings. At the deepest level, however, the distinction between the level at which rational criteria apply and those where we must have recourse to psycho‐social explanations probably breaks down.     

The European University at St. Petersburg: a case study in sociology of post-Soviet knowledge

The article presents results of an ongoing study of centers of intellectual innovations in post-Soviet Russia. Using the European University at St. Petersburg as the main object of their analysis, the authors demonstrate how new models of academic careers, which became available in the 1980s and 1990s, were eventually institutionalized as new models of knowledge production and educational practices. Supported by American foundations, this private university had to invent a new institutional structure and to position itself within the field of higher education, still mostly dominated by the state.