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For Wolff, it may have been a blessing; nevertheless, the sociology of knowledge was considered, as a result, to be vague and abstract. Child in the 1940s, for example, argued that the sociology of knowledge failed to produce a cohesive ground for the objectivity of social determination, and Merton in the 1950s also commented that the sociology of knowledge remained largely a subject of meditation rather than a field of sustained methodological investigation (Hekman, 1986). By the standards of behavioral empiricism in the United States at the time, the contributions of the sociology of knowledge were perceived as elusive by many sociologists (Holzner, 1972).
In defense of the sociology of knowledge and of Mannheim, Wolff (1983) made public a letter written (April 15, 1946) to him by Mannheim, in response to critics of one of his presentations in the United States. Mannheim wrote,
If there are contradictions and inconsistencies in my paper this is, I think, not so much due to the fact that I overlooked them but because I make a point of developing a theme to its end even if it contradicts some other statements. I use this method because I think that in this marginal field of human knowledge we should not conceal inconsistencies, so to speak covering up the wounds, but our duty is to show the sore spots in human thinking at its present stage.
In a simple empirical investigation or straightforward logical argu-ment, contradictions are mistakes; but when the task is to show that our whole thought system in its various parts leads to inconsistencies these inconsistencies are the thorn in the flesh from which we have to start.
The inconsistencies in our whole outlook, which in my presentation only become more visible, are due to the fact that we have two approaches which move on a different plane.
On the one hand, our most advanced empirical investigations, especially those which come from history, psychology, and sociology, show that the human mind with its whole categorical apparatus is a dynamic entity.
