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The word epistemology comes from the ancient Greek terms ἐπιστήμη (episteme, meaning knowledge or understanding) and λόγος (logos, meaning study of or reason), literally, the study of knowledge. Despite its ancient roots, the word itself was only coined in the 19th century to designate this field as a distinct branch of philosophy.
Mannheim's theory on the sociology of knowledge is based on some of the epistemological discoveries of Immanuel Kant. Sociology of knowledge is known as a section of the greater field known as the sociology of culture. The idea of sociology of culture is defined as the relationship between culture and society. [18]
One of the enduring difficulties with defining "social epistemology" that arises is the attempt to determine what the word "knowledge" means in this context. There is also a challenge in arriving at a definition of "social" which satisfies academics from different disciplines. [1]
The sociology of knowledge has a subclass and a complement. Its subclass is sociology of scientific knowledge. Its complement is the sociology of ignorance. [2] [3] The sociology of knowledge was pioneered primarily by the sociologist Émile Durkheim at the beginning of the 20th century. His work deals directly with how conceptual thought ...
The sociology of knowledge is the subfield of sociology that studies how thought and society are related to each other. [201] Like the anthropology of knowledge, it understands "knowledge" in a wide sense that encompasses philosophical and political ideas, religious and ideological doctrines, folklore, law, and technology.
Immanuel Kant [a] (born Emanuel Kant; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential and controversial figures in modern Western philosophy.
W. V. Quine challenged traditional epistemology with his philosophy of naturalised epistemology. Epistemology is commonly defined as the "theory of knowledge". In this sense, it investigates the nature of knowledge and how far it extends, but epistemologists also investigate other concepts such as justification, understanding and rationality. [20]
Today, practitioners of both social and physical sciences recognize the distorting effect of observer bias and structural limitations. This scepticism has been facilitated by a general weakening of deductivist accounts of science by philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn , and new philosophical movements such as critical realism and neopragmatism .