ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about Richard Pring's engagement as a philosopher with the sociology of education. This engagement began with the questions he raised about my book Knowledge and Control. Pring's engagement with the sociology of education continued with his critique of sociological concepts. The significance of strand of Pring's work is how, in helping to demolish the naive idealism of the 'new sociology of education' of the 1970s, it opened up a new relationship between sociology and philosophy of education, with the question of knowledge at its centre. Pring's critique of early understanding of epistemology points us forward in two directions. First, it indicates that there might be an alternative to the relativism that sociological approach to knowledge sometimes. Second, it suggests a more relational view of disciplinary specialisation that combines a recognition of their separateness with an appreciation of their complementarity - a view Durkheim described as 'organic solidarity'.
