S OCIOLOGY OF K NOWLEDGE Before we go any further here, has it ever occurred to any of you that all this is simply one grand misunderstanding? Since you're not here to learn anything, but to be taught so you can pass these tests, knowledge has to be organized so it can be taught, and it has to be reduced to information so it can be organized do you follow that? In other words this leads you to assume that organization is an inherent property of the knowledge itself, and that disorder and chaos are simply irrelevant forces that threaten it from outside. In fact it's exactly the opposite. Order is simply a thin, perilous condition we try to impose on the basic reality of chaos... William Gaddis, JR, p. 25 According to C. Wright Mills, there is a perspective called the " sociological imagination " that can be used to " frame ," or interpret, perceptions of social life. In part, this imagination features a healthy skepticism, assuming that social appearances often aren't what they seem. But even more, this perspective involves an awareness toward the linkages between history and biography, between social structure and consciousness, and between "knowledge" and its socio-cultural contexts. It is this one of this discipline's approaches to critical thinking Perhaps no where is this imagination so exercised than in the sociology of knowledge , which studies the social sources and social consequences of knowledgehow, for instance, social organization shapes both the content and structure of knowledge or how various social, cultural, political conditions shield people from truth. It has been argued that the concept of knowledge is to sociology as the notion of attitude is to psychology: a notion so central that, in many ways, it is the foundation for the entire discipline. (Though written nearly 70 years ago | |
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