of practical time-space activity. Again we see an epistemological gap between this
reliable, materially existing but tacit practice and the verbal constructions and
human-sized imagery which include the reified nouns and imputed substances of
theoretical scientific entities.- Every mathematical article starts off with a verbal title and engages in verbal
explanations, however cryptic, of its problems before plunging into manipulating
its symbolism; at the other end, successful mathematics becomes part of the verbal
discourse by which mathematicians summarize and point toward past accomplish-
ments and future topics. Data illustrating this point for mathematical journals are
given in Collins (1984). - One version of the sociology of knowledge or sociology of science attempts to
reduce knowledge produced by intellectuals to the ideological claims of external
groups outside the network, for example, as reflection of class interests in the
surrounding society. Knowledge is sometimes constructed in this way. But lay
influence is not the main source of the social construction of specifically intellectual
knowledge. The ideas of ordinary social discourse are on a lower level of abstrac-
tion than ideas produced by intellectuals; and the creativity of intellectual networks
comes from creating topics and problems which arise not in the lay world at all
but primarily through the dynamics of attention-seeking within their inner social
space. The externalist sociology of knowledge began with the conception of ideol-
ogy, and thus with the tendency to regard sociology as explaining the source of
false beliefs. As sociology has begun to study the internal social communities of
intellectuals, it has come to encompass the social construction of true beliefs. The
suspicion lingers that sociology means reducing true beliefs to false beliefs, al-
though this flatly contradicts what is asserted: the social construction of true beliefs
is about true beliefs. - Bloor’s “strong programme” (1978) is that of a Wittgensteinian philosopher;
the local social constructivism of laboratory studies (e.g., Latour and Woolgar,
1983) derived from a network which branched from the phenomenologists to
ethnomethodology, via Schutz and Garfinkel. The earlier sociology of knowledge
of Marx and Engels came from the Hegelian circle of the 1840s; Durkheim’s came
from his personal confrontation between the neo-Kantianism and empiricist psy-
chology of his immediate predecessors. - In one batch of manuscripts for journal review, I have read of the intersection
between the conceptions of Max Weber and Dostoyevsky, and between those of
Durkheim and Schopenhauer. Further cross-combinations of these and others are
obvious. And each generation of literature makes possible new combinations in
the following generation.
1034 •^ Notes to Pages 875–879