Conceptions of Institutions and the Theory of Knowledge: 2nd Ed.

Capa
Transaction Publishers, 01/01/1989 - 223 páginas

This classic study is concerned with the impact of the sociology of knowledge on the classical theory of knowledge. First issued in a limited edition in 1956, the book has since attracted what can only be termed a cult following. In his own quite original way, Taylor considers knowledge as a product of group life in an institutional and cultural context. In his emphasis on the sociological rather than the psychological or individual, he reveals a sharp break with the empiricist and rationalist traditions of epistemology as such. This makes the work path-breaking.

Taylor maintains that the sociology of knowledge began its career as a simple distrust of exact knowledge that betrayed its social origins. But the field is now at a point at which as a discipline it is in charge of the systematic formulation of the pervasive features of a culture. The growth of symbolism, relativism, and institution-building as such has transformed the study of knowledge itself. In this insight, he anticipates the development of knowledge as an area of study unto itself, apart from the information or ideology underlying claims to knowledge. This edition includes three newly discovered essays by Taylor-on the sociology of art; the role of choice in human life; and the connection between history and the written word. The essays complete his lifelong search for the institutional frames of ideological belief.

Taylor, whose career began as a teacher of sociology at the University of Texas and Dubuque University, takes up in systematic order the history of philosophical disputations on knowledge, moving from individualism, positivism, and historical relativism. He goes beyond criticism into a view of the "concept" as an organizing principle of action, and as a statement of propositions of how the world can be examined in future states.

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Índice

Introduction to the Transaction Edition
1
Introduction
23
Individualism
41
Positivism
65
Historical Relativism
83
Summary and Interpretation
97
The Conceptual System
113
Recapitulation and Conclusion
127
Notes
141
Knowing as Narration Stanley Taylors Unpublished Papers with Commentary by Elwin H Powell
175
Reflections on the Power of the Written Word
183
Constructing Objects Conjuring with the Self as Actor
191
The Conceptual System and the Sociology of Art
199
Bibliography
215
Index
221
Direitos de autor

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Palavras e frases frequentes

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Página 157 - The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
Página 157 - Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign masters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do.
Página 157 - The community is a fictitious body, composed of the individual persons who are considered as constituting as it were its members. The interest of the community then is— what? The sum of the interests of the several members who compose it.
Página 51 - In short, there are two principles which I cannot render consistent, nor is it in my power to renounce either of them, viz. that all our distinct perceptions are distinct existences, and that the mind never perceives any real connexion among distinct existences.
Página 157 - Annals of the Parish. After using it as a designation for several years, he and others abandoned it from a growing dislike to anything resembling a badge or watchword of sectarian distinction. But as a name for one single opinion, not a set of opinions...
Página 155 - Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity, we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.
Página 143 - Although the roads to human power and to human knowledge lie close together, and are nearly the same, nevertheless on account of the pernicious and inveterate habit of dwelling on abstractions, it is safer to begin and raise the sciences from those foundations which have relation to practice, and to let the active part itself be as the seal which prints and determines the contemplative counterpart.
Página 6 - An institution consists of a concept (idea, notion, doctrine, interest) and a structure. The structure is a framework, or apparatus, or perhaps only a number of functionaries set to cooperate in prescribed ways at a certain conjuncture.

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