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The Sociology of Knowledge and the Ethos of Science

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Nico Stehr: Pioneer in the Theory of Society and Knowledge

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Abstract

The Critical Assessment of the classical sociology of knowledge , especially of its Mannheimian version, which has been in evidence for nearly sixty years even among otherwise radically different theoretical traditions in the social sciences and philosophy, is at once surprising and significant. If we take the widespread cognitive disagreement among sociological traditions (see Merton 1978) as an initial criterion, then it might be expected that assessments of the basic claims advanced by the sociology of knowledge would vary greatly.

This text was first published as: Meja, Volker and Nico Stehr. 1993. “The Sociology of Knowledge and the Ethos of Science ”, in: Eileen Leonard, Hermann Strasser & Kenneth Westhues (eds.), In Search of Community: Essays in Memory of Werner Stark (1909–1985). New York: Fordham University Press: 65–83. The permission to republish this text was granted on by Will Cerbone, Fordham University Press, New York.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    As is well known, the sociology of knowledge tradition is by no means confined to Karl Mannheim’s particular conception, even if his approach remains in many respects the most important exemplar. There are a variety and a considerable range of theoretical positions, including relatively recent ones (see Stehr/Meja 1984; Meja/Stehr 1990).

  2. 2.

    Berger/Luckmann (1967: 14) argue that although the sociology of knowledge ought to inquire into all ideas that pass for knowledge, epistemological questions cannot be part of a sociology of knowledge agenda because they “properly belong to the methodology of the social sciences, an enterprise that belongs to philosophy and is by definition other than sociology, which is indeed an object of its inquiries.”

  3. 3.

    As a study by Köhnke (1985: 58–105) has shown, epistemology emerges in the first part of the nineteenth century and then begins to assume a separate identity within philosophy.

  4. 4.

    Mannheim’s at least implicit conviction that the sociology of knowledge may well be a foundational science and therefore of greater use than an ordinary sociological speciality (see Lieber 1965: 82–83)—which some scholars have interpreted to mean that the sociology of knowledge aspires to replace philosophy (e.g., Salomon 1947: 350–64)—has encountered strong opposition (cf. Horkheimer 1930: 38; Rüschemeyer 1958: 4; Lenk 1961: 313; Neusüss 1968: 26). It is tempting to ask whether the precarious intellectual and social identity and legitimacy of sociology in the past (and to some extent even today) have not invariably generated strong opposition to any efforts that discourage specialization. Disagreement about cognitive demarcations is by now a nearly traditional feature of intellectual disputes in sociology and in the other social sciences (see Merton 1973: 10). Opposition to a general sociology of knowledge with implications beyond the discipline of sociology also results from disagreements about which is the leading social science discipline. While in the 1930s support for such an interdisciplinary program that would reduce the rigid division of labor in the social sciences and the humanities was broad, opinions about the ‘leading’ discipline or speciality differed. Horkheimer (1937: 3–16), for example, in his inaugural lecture at the University of Frankfurt, supported similar cognitive aims but suggested philosophy as the leading perspective.

  5. 5.

    Mannheim uses this expression in describing the position he vainly attempted to avoid in a draft of his survey essay on the sociology of knowledge published in the Handwörterbuch der Soziologie. This draft is among the Mannheim papers deposited in the University Library of the University of Keele (Staffordshire, England). In his essay on historicism , Mannheim (1952: 127) similarly refers to the doctrine that “all action and decision is relative and lacks a standard” as one of the typical interpretations of historicism , namely, one conflating historicism and relativism .

  6. 6.

    Some of those who interpret Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge as an exemplar of a relativistically inclined epistemology merely want to stress that they disagree with the means by which he attempted to avoid the charge of relativism (for example, Merton 1957: 502–508). At the same time, other critics assume a much stronger intellectual and political affinity between a relativistic position and Mannheim’s position. This applies especially to those who stress that Mannheim’s ‘relationism’ is ‘relativism ’ in disguise (see von Schelting 1936: 664; Mandelbaum 1938: 67; Aron 1953: 85; Maquet 1951: 84; Lukács [1954] 1974; Louch 1966: 205; Hamilton 1974: 128).

  7. 7.

    But compare Wilhelm Baldamus’ instructive discussion (1976) of the function of dichotomous notions in sociological theory-building.

  8. 8.

    We have attempted to demonstrate elsewhere (Meja/Stehr 1988) that such a critique is usually linked with efforts to show that the issue of relativism itself is not a sociological matter, that it cannot be addressed from a sociological perspective. The upshot, as Barnes (1974: 180) has observed, is that “despite Mannheim, relativism has never really been an issue in sociology.”

  9. 9.

    Lukács ([1954] 1974: 89) pointedly argued that Mannheim’s sociology of knowledge , in the face of fascism and imperialism, represents an “ideology of helpless surrender”.

  10. 10.

    Very much in congruence with such a conception, Mannheim (1952: 178) writes in his 1925 essay on “The Problem of a Sociology of Knowledge”: “Thus, one can at most arrive at the belief—by extrapolating from the structural position observed today—that the present rivalry of antagonistic systems and standpoints, and their attempts at incorporating the rival positions within themselves, indicate an inherent tendency of all human thought to account for the whole of reality, a tendency which falls short of achieving its goal as long as a fully comprehensive systematic principle is not yet discovered. This, then, will be reflected in the ‘finiteness’, the limitation to partial perspectives, of actual thinking. So far as we can see, reality is always more comprehensive than any of the partial standpoints it brings forth. Then, if we extrapolate, we may believe that a central systematic idea will eventually be found which will in fact permit a synthesis of the entire process.’’

  11. 11.

    Already in 1924, Mannheim writes in his essay on ‘Historicism ’: “We notice in all spheres (the ‘ideological’ is most conspicuous) that in contrast to these tendencies toward autonomy, atomization, and analysis (three fundamentally different tendencies, which nevertheless have something in common) there is taking place a movement toward synthesis. What historicism undertakes in the individual historico-cultural spheres, in art history, in the history of religion, in sociology, etc., in that it exhibits these different spheres of culture, not in their immanent exclusiveness, but as an integrative part of a totality—what historicism accomplishes here, is attempted also—to give one example out of many—in modern psychology. Here too, for example, the principle holds, that we should not only investigate the various sensory fields in isolation from one another, but should also explore the problems of the solidarity and unity of sensory experience. Here too, that analysing, atomizing, isolating tendency which dominated the other sciences as well, and which led to the endeavour to build up the most complex structures out of the most simple elements, is being supplanted by the recognition of ‘complexes’ and ‘totalities’ as primary and irreducible data, as given, for example, in perceptions of Gestalt. All these examples may be regarded as symptomatic of the fact that on the reflective (‘ideological’) side of the total process, one can find a number of parallel trends. This raises the question whether these phenomena do not represent a counterpart, at the level of scientific method, to the transformation process which is taking place in the social structure. If the atomizing, sectionalizing mode of thought may be regarded as corresponding to a social structure which allowed a maximum dissolution of the social bonds and which produced an economy consisting of liberalistically independent, atom-like units, then the present trend toward synthesis, toward the investigation of totalities may be regarded as the emergence, at the level of reflection, of a force which is pushing social reality into more collectivistic channels. It may very well be, indeed, that this newly developing impulse to restore a psychic and intellectual unity in the place of the separation of spheres brought about by the previous epoch, the levelling down of the sharp boundaries between them, corresponds to a general change in practical attitudes” (Mannheim 1952: 95–96). In 1928 Mannheim writes in his essay “Competition as a Cultural Phenomenon” (and similarly, a year later, in Ideologie und Utopie): “There are periods in modern history during which a representative generation becomes free to achieve a synthesis. Such generations take a fresh approach in that they are able to envisage from the higher platform of a synthesis those alternatives and antagonisms which their fathers had interpreted in a dogmatic, absolute sense. Then, if there are existential problems not yet ripe for a solution, such a generation will experience them in entirely different contexts; the old antagonisms, however, become less sharp, and it will be possible to find a point, so to speak, farther back, from which partisan positions can be seen as merely partial and relative, and thus transcended. (It seems, by the way, that the sociology of knowledge itself provides just such a viewpoint ‘farther back’ from which theoretical philosophical differences which cannot be reconciled on the level of manifest content, can be seen through in all their partiality and therewith made amenable to a synthesis. The existence of this continually receding viewpoint—which one might be tempted to interpret inaccurately as a sign of an ever-increasing reflexiveness—presents us with a hitherto untouched but nevertheless important problem of the sociology of knowledge .) The problem of synthesis is far too complicated to allow us even to approach its solution here. It must suffice for us to see that syntheses do exist, and that the history of thought in modern times provides instances not only of polarization, but of association, crossing-over, and synthesis. One thing, however, we must not lose sight of: the syntheses are not confined to purely intellectual currents; they also represent interpretations of social forces” (Mannheim 1952: 224–25).

    Nearly twenty years later, in his last comment on the sociology of knowledge , in a letter to Kurt H. Wolff (April 15, 1946) a few months before his death, Mannheim calls upon our whole generation to complete the work of synthesis “as nothing is more obvious than that we transcended in every field the idea that man’s mind is equal to an absolute Ratio in favour of a theory that we think on the basis of changing frames of reference, the elaboration of which is one of the most exciting tasks of the near future” (Wolff 1983: 204).

  12. 12.

    Mannheim might easily have been tempted to employ a fairly straightforward strategy to ward off objections to a thoroughgoing relativism by arguing that there are no absolute truths, except one. As Gellner (1974: 49) notes, for example, it is a frequent strategy to make “an exception on one’s behalf; having difficulty in accounting for oneself is the professional ailment of philosophers, and is virtually written into the terms of reference under which they work.” However, Mannheim clearly was not primarily concerned with epistemological discourse. As a matter of fact , he considered a merely ‘logical’ resolution of the issue of relativism unsatisfactory and incomplete. He consequently writes (Mannheim 1952: 128f.): “Only a mode of thought, only a philosophy which is able to give a concrete answer to the question ‘what shall we do?’ [and not ‘what shall we know?’] can put forward the claim to have overcome relativism .”

  13. 13.

    The typical response of critics unimpressed by the results of the research effort and unsympathetic to its philosophical and sociological underpinnings has been to assign the label of relativistic to such a research program (for example, Popper 1970: 56; Phillips 1977: 71).

  14. 14.

    Whether one regards such lack of precision as a sign of a deficient theory depends on one’s conception of an adequate theory. It is equally possible to argue that it is precisely the lack of precision in this regard that is a hallmark of good theorizing in that it avoids the fallacy of ‘overgeneralization’ so typical in social science.

  15. 15.

    Mannheim (1952: 226–27) describes this process and its function for the delineation of researchable questions well when he stresses that “it is out of the question that a certain analysis should be stopped short once and for all at the most crucial point merely because the recognized domain of a different scientific department allegedly begins there (a mode of procedure typical of the bureaucratized organization of science)”.

  16. 16.

    The nature of the specialized cognitive identity that emerges is determined to a large extent by the dominant intellectual traditions within the discipline as well as by the nature of the relations of disciplinary perspectives to theoretical traditions in neighboring disciplines (cf. Coleman 1972; Offe 1985).

  17. 17.

    According to Gouldner (1976: 39), rational discourse implies that the justification of knowledge claims does not invoke ‘authorities’; from an historical point of view, the emergence of rational discourse therefore requires that “the coercive power and the public credit of societal authorities has been undermined, restricted, or declared irrelevant, and that the use of manipulative rhetoric is limited either by institutional and moral restraints or by the prevailing technology of mass communication.” However, this does not mean that reference or deference to authorities has been overcome completely in contemporary scientific discourse. This may not be possible in the first place. In the same spirit of skepticism, Bourdieu (1975: 24) has argued that “in the scientific field as in the field of class relations, no arbitrating authority exists to legitimate legitimacy-giving authority from the relative strength of the groups whose interests they express: inasmuch as the definition of the criteria of judgement and the principles of hierarchies is itself an issue in a struggle, there are no good judges, because there is no judge who is not also party to the dispute.” In other words, there are good sociological grounds for a dismissal of the possibility of rational discourse that is pure rational discourse.

  18. 18.

    The assumption that rational discourse in science, whatever the social structure, is exemplary in a political sense and a model for other social institutions is a central thesis of Popper’s ([1945] 1962) political philosophy. As Lubasz (1981) has shown, Popper transposes his ideal-typical description of the ‘rational’ social and intellectual mode of scientific organization onto political institutions and decision-making processes. Popper assumes further that rational politics is identical with a politics committed to a trial-and-error approach. However, as Lubasz also points out, the “scientific attitude to politics can be a realistic one—so long as it is not applied as Professor Popper applies it, to the whole community, but to a political elite. A political elite such as a junta, or a bureaucracy, or a cabinet of government ministers could resemble the scientific community in its essential features. Such an elite might be in complete agreement as to what the world is like, what the problems are, how they are to be solved, and what is to count as a good solution. A political elite could resemble a community of scientific experts—so long as it was in a position to treat the rest of the political community the way physicists treat the physical universe: as something ‘out there’. At that point political problems would resemble technical problems—but only at the price of abandoning the whole notion of the Open Society.”

  19. 19.

    Merton’s widely discussed analysis of the ethos of science (1957: 550–61)—that is, of the norms of universalism , communism, organized skepticism, and disinterestedness—is first and foremost an attempt to consider the immanent functions of adherence to these norms for the development of scientific knowledge (cf. Stehr 1978).

  20. 20.

    The perhaps even naïve confidence with which scientists and non-scientists alike have subscribed to the ethic of modern science has experienced a perhaps decisive historical challenge during the past decade.

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Stehr (with Volker Meja), N. (2018). The Sociology of Knowledge and the Ethos of Science. In: Adolf, M. (eds) Nico Stehr: Pioneer in the Theory of Society and Knowledge. Pioneers in Arts, Humanities, Science, Engineering, Practice, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76995-0_13

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