ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the central concept of the analysis of knowledge and offers observations about one's knowledge about knowledge. It refers to the famous metaphor that knowledge is power and discusses perspectives that overestimate either the extent to which knowledge gravitates toward the powerful in society or to which it can be easily deployed by the powerful to cement their privileges. Bell argues that postindustrial society is a knowledge society for two major reasons: The sources of innovation are increasingly derivative from research and development and the weight of the society measured by a larger proportion of Gross National Product and a larger share of employment is increasingly in the knowledge field. The fact that science is pursued in this self-realizing fashion is evident, from the once widely discussed notion of different knowledge-guiding interests that prevail in science. The different, quasi-transcendental, knowledge-constitutive interests are anchored in the human species as a whole.
