ABSTRACT
This essay delves into the social justice commitments integral to Michael Young’s sociology of knowledge, which have remained constant across what many perceive as his diametrically opposed theoretical trajectories. It seeks to extract the core elements that have evolved across them. It does this by drawing selectively on the work of the French philosopher and founder of the idea of ‘curriculum’, Peter Ramus; and on the views of gentleman scientist and disgraced Lord Chancellor under King James, Francis Bacon. It argues that Ramus was one of the first to discuss knowledge as a living tradition external to individual knowers and unmoored from their individual virtues. This permitted Ramus to construct a curriculum based on the logical principles of each knowledge tradition. Bacon constructed an artful blend of whiggish optimism about knowledge growth paired with an argument about the redemptive power of knowledge. Both these sets of then-novel ideas have a certain resonance in Young’s work, and help to shed light on how he might have changed course in his writing without losing sight of an overall vision of equality and social justice.
