Talk:Sociology of knowledge

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Sociology of knowledge
Hello again, I have added another reference to the "new sociology of knowledge" section. It would be great if this section were to become more developed. Hopefully, these references can be used as a good starting point! --Yvegao (talk) 15:58, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi Yvegao and Wendy. I read over your contributions and found them to be excellent. Both of your contributions have helped make this article much more informative and I will make mention of them in my paper. Just as a note, both of your articles have hyperlinks that are red and lead to an editing page. I'm not sure if you meant to do this, so I did not take the liberty to change them. Perhaps you intended to do a blue hyperlink with the ' '? --Seth Mortezavi (talk) 18:04, 27 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Seth. Thanks so much for your comments. The link in red is not my doing, but now that I feel a little attached to this section I will try to change it. Your elaboration on Foucault's section is very good. I'd like to do something similar with the last section, the New Sociology of Knowledge. If I get this paper done early I just might!--Wendy.traas (talk) 11:54, 28 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Hi Seth, thank you for your kind feedback. I was the one to create the link in red. The link is in red because there has not yet been a page that has been created for the 'new sociology of knowledge' and I thought perhaps this topic may warrant a page on its own. Therefore, I've created the link for it in case anyone may be interested in expanding this. Thanks. --Yvegao (talk) 23:30, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I have added a new section to include the 'New Sociology of Knowledge'. I would appreciate any input on my contribution. Thank you. --Yvegao (talk) 21:59, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

--- I am planning on expanding the section on Durkheim to give more of a summary of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life as it relates to the sociology of knowledge. I will also add some references to the section. --Wendy.traas (talk) 13:40, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

--- I have extended the section on Foucault, giving a summary of the role of power relations and the social creation of knowledge. Please let me know if you have any suggestions that will improve my contribution. Thank you. --Seth Mortezavi (talk) 15:01, 25 October 2011 (UTC) Regarding Sociology of Math - I think we should quantify or add qualifiers to "and much of mathematics has been developed precisely for the goal of developing these models in a rigorous fashion." Might be true for some Western mathematics, certainly Newton, the Bernoulli's, Laplace, Lagrange, but not universally so (Reimman, Hardy, Littlewood, Hilbert, Wiles, ...) Thoughts? The article is Ok (in relation to a lot of other pomobabble-driven nonsense) 209.128.81.201 18:03, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

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Should Thomas Sowell's book Knowledge and Decisions be mentioned here? Michael Hardy 21:58 Jan 13, 2003 (UTC)


 * In a word, no. Sowell is an economist, not a sociologist. Now (pace SLR!) I do not see that as a barrier to his contributing to sociological thought, but if I get the gist of Knowledge and Decisions correctly from the on-line sources I looked over just now, the work (while undoubtedly interesting in its own right) has very little indeed to do with the sociology of knowledge. Tannin 12:26 Jan 16, 2003 (UTC)

Why did you remove the bit about the significance of the SofK to sociology as a whole? Tannin


 * I'm not sure if you speak to me, but I removed what seemed to me not necessary -- to say, sociology of knowledge influenced more or less all branches of sociology in a way or other seemed a bit inconclusive to me (if that is the word) till we *) 00:43 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)

--- Regarding the Foucault/Mathematics-part. I agree that it's a good idea to mention Foucault. But I find the part of the article rather long (maybe it should become part of an Foucault-article?), and I strongly disagree with the paragraphs about mathematics, which -- besides the links to Foucault -- sound more like (a) some mathematic-in-jokes and (b) cognitive psychology. Maybe my idea of the sociology of knowledge is to narrow (or used in that way only in Germany), but I would reserve "sociology of knowledge" (Wissenssoziologie) for phenomenological/ethnomethodological studies, combined with some french and german classics. A somewhat broader approach -- but still not including the psychology of mathematical thinking ;-) -- is found here: . till we *) 00:43 Jan 28, 2003 (UTC)


 * For what it's worth, the descriptions in this section about the Erd&#337;s number are highly inaccurate. The Erd&#337;s number applies to all mathematicians, not just those who collaborated with Erd&#337;s.  The graph in question is the graph of collaborative papers among all mathematicians, not just those involving Erd&#337;s.  The only way in which Erd&#337;s is special to this concept is that he's the highest degree vertex in this graph.  --Dbenbenn 05:26, 5 Dec 2004 (UTC)

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Shall we mention Alvin Goldman and John Searle? They have related books Knowledge in a Social World and The Construction of Social Reality. Aknxy 20:22, Oct 1, 2004 (UTC)

Knowledge
Folks, I have just created Knowledge with a link to here. Would someone like to build the section into a decent piece? Banno 21:40, August 5, 2005 (UTC)


 * Actually I was interessed in the difference between sociology of scientific knowledge (SKK), sociology of science and sociology of knowledge. As I am German but have to deal with English text - I am a bit confused. My question is: What is the difference between the last two concepts as in German there only excists an entry about sociology of knowledge whereas sociology of science seems to mean the same??? Thank you very much for helping me to understand the difference. Perditta 12.Nov.08 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.178.100.223 (talk) 09:02, 12 November 2008 (UTC)

Mannheim
I have tried to clear up the bit on Mannheim and relativism. I feel that the previous entry was not objective enough in claiming that relativism was a paradox for Mannheim since it applies a conception of truth which he did not think was viable to him. I have tried to show that elements of his thought are, to me and others, paradoxical nonetheless.

Foucault
The following sentence makes two points and does not cite any sources for them:

"This study still guides the sociology of knowledge and has been claimed to have sparked single-handedly much of postmodernism."

Fairly strong points that could do with sourcing —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.106.149.39 (talk) 16:11, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

That which sparked post-modernism was Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche [see his 4 volume study of Nietzsche, esp. V.3/4] crossed with Dilthey's hermeneutics. The "Will to Power" meets the historically conditioned worldview as objectified in formalized language use as found in historical documents. In the case of Foucault: the language of "mental illness", the language of "punishment", the language of "sexuality", etc..```` —Preceding unsigned comment added by 161.185.150.45 (talk) 20:00, 9 May 2008 (UTC)

Latour
I think it is unfortunate that the section of Latour links to the wikipedia article on Social Construction.

Not that Latour don't use this term, but he uses it in the exact opposite of what that article defines it as. Not to show that science developes "because people agree to behave as if it exists or follow certain conventional rules", but to show that only by thurough contruction can science be precise enough to establish facts. He discusses this in "Reassembling the social: an introduction to Actor-network theory".

How do you suggest such nuances can be articulated in the wiki-page on socialogy of knowledge? (Monkikopimi (talk) 09:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC))

Knowledge ecology
I have added the knew section Knowledge ecology, which bring an interesting perspective, that to my opinion is relevant to this article. This section would benefit of some work. If you disagree about the relevance of this section, would you suggest other idea how to formulate the idea in this article? Thanks --Nabeth (talk) 13:50, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Sociology of Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge
It's important to note there is a sociology of knowledge page AND a sociology of scientific knowledge page. I think the latter should be merged into the former as a subcategory, but if not, lets be keeping them properly distinct!! --Tomsega (talk) 16:13, 8 September 2009 (UTC)


 * yes they should be distinct. they should not be merged. --Buridan (talk) 17:58, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

Any mention of Giambattista Vico?
Vico's work in early 18th century prefigures the main concepts of sociology of knowledge and therefore deserves mention. In his book New ScienceThe New Science, Vico states that human history, the social realm, is man's creation. Whilst his influence was not large, he appears to be the first to make a clear distinction between epistemologies for natural world and the social world. He forms a dialectic of knowledge, society and language to inform his historical and sociological methods.ConBlanchet (talk) 16:52, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Swidler
"Knowledge ecology, and its related concept information ecology has been elaborated by different academics and practitioners such as Thomas H. Davenport,[22] Bonnie Nardi,[23] or Swidler." Who is Swidler? Leonard? GangofOne (talk) 21:54, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Perhaps they mean Ann Swidler? I don't know what she's done on 'knowledge ecology' but she co-authored a really interesting paper on the new sociology of knowledge. --Marguerite Duras In France (talk) 07:03, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Legitimation Code Theory
This section makes statements about Legitimation Code Theory—how it emerged, whose work influenced it, what it's used for, where it's used—without actually explaining what it is, i.e. what sociological claims it makes and what sorts of research and theoretical assumptions go into those claims. --47.215.156.213 (talk) 21:11, 9 November 2017 (UTC)