ABSTRACT
If we give credence to Luhmann’s motto, then new knowledge almost always replaces old knowledge. What is more, new knowledge is apparently always better than the old knowledge. New knowledge most likely replaces old knowledge, we can then conclude, because it more adequately meets new types of demands and basic conditions for action. Collins refers to the reliability of old knowledge, which has proven its worth by means of its longevity.1 On the one hand, old and traditional knowledge (on the term traditional
knowledge, see Watson-Verran and Turnbull, 1995) is seen as a kind of obsolescent model, since it is constantly being outdated and put in question due to the incessant rationalization of the modern life-world. On the other hand, old knowledge holds out stubbornly even in modern societies. One encounters traditional knowledge in many spheres of life and in many modern institutions. If this diagnosis is accurate, of course, it raises the question of the function of traditional knowledge in modern societies, and of the limits of the ‘power’ of new, modern knowledge. As we have stressed, knowledge expands and limits social action. For decades, social scientists perceived the question of the systematic limits of the power of scientifi c knowledge outside the science system itself, theoretically and politically, as largely solved, or insignifi cant – very likely due to the general feelings concerning the seemingly unlimited practical successes of modern science and technology: a hope which, however, was not always completely unanimous; an enthusiasm that was at times contagious; and occasionally even mere sceptical fascination. And to the extent that this problem is discussed at all, it refl ects the seemingly inevitable dilemma between scientifi c knowledge on one side and traditional, handed-down social ideas on the other. Robert Musil ([1930] 1952: 47, our transl.), for example, treats this topic as the central confl ict of the age when he says in The Man Without Qualities :
Until a few years ago, for the majority of social scientists this day was not necessarily far off, as for instance the idea of a ‘scientifi c politics’ signals.2
