ABSTRACT
The sociology of knowledge of Marx, Mannheim and Durkheim, its acknowledged founders, as well as the versions of most other writers on the subject, despite the crucial insights into the relation of thought and socio-economic life, remained at a crude level in certain respects. This chapter criticises Marxist and other theories of ideology and knowledge for a certain crudity and superficiality in their conception of the determining co-ordinates of ideologically distorted and socially/materially based knowledge. It goes some way towards elucidating the way in which the mind and its modes of thought are social, linguistic and experiential creations. The philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language have shown the essential perspectivism of thought, and suggested some of the ways in which the genetic process operates. The sociological tradition deriving from Marx, similarly concerned with the social influences on knowledge and thought, investigates the ideological distortions and definitions of reality imposed by the dominant social group.
