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Aware that knowledge, like truth, varies according to which side of the Pyrenees one finds oneself on, they aimed at describing the forms that variation can take and at identifying the social factors that influenced them. In framing these questions, they set the agenda for philosophers and social scientists for generations to come. How, for example, can “history” be anything more than an arbitrary list of “events” if we do not understand the values, motivations, and modes of thought of the participants in those events? How can we explain anything rather than simply record it? How can we come to know the past and others and the pasts of others? Is a “social science” possible or a contradiction in terms? If it is possible, what would be the appropriate paradigm of investigation?
The overarching theme of this metadiscipline is the relationship between social structures and thought and the ways in which both scientific and everyday knowledge is socially conditioned. Schematically, the basic concepts and objectives of the fledgling discipline in its present form were established by three men: Karl Mannheim (1893–1947), Alfred Schütz (1899–1959), and Norbert Elias (1897–1990). All three were forced into exile by the Nazi régime in the 1930s. Mannheim and Elias went to teach in England, Elias later moving to an exceptionally long and productive retirement in Amsterdam. Schütz went to the United States, where he worked as both an international lawyer and as a teacher. It was very largely through their publications and teaching that the sociology of knowledge and the whole intellectual tradition that had produced it became known—or at least available—in Britain and the United States. However, although they were members of a common tradition, each of the three had areas of special interest. Mannheim’s main field was theoretical knowledge—that is, formalised bodies of knowledge such as those that are usually described as “specialised”, “abstract” or “scientific”. However, instead of asking “Is this theory true?” the sociologist of knowledge asks why it is or was true for those people in that context. The object of scrutiny is no longer the constitutive elements of a theory—the ideas, hypotheses, and evidence on which its internal logic is based—but the social contingencies, the “unscientific” influences such as the interests of particular classes or groups which shape their and their society’s worldview.