ABSTRACT
The sociology of knowledge investigates neither the coincidence of mind-contents with the appropriate facts, nor yet the co-ordination of the various ideas among themselves: neither the material truth of individual statements, nor the formal truth of inclusive systems of ideas. The adage ‘health is preferable to illness’ is a value-judgment accepted in absolutely all human societies, and so a desire to know, and to get the better of, health-destroying agencies has been a mind-directing and knowledge-generating value all through history, social evolutions and social revolutions notwithstanding. There can be few serious and thoughtful researchers in the social sciences who have not at times felt like Pascal—felt the cold breath of relativity, the icy hand of instability. Some of the greatest social philosophers have been permanently preoccupied with the formal problems of the social sciences and they have been so preoccupied because they have felt the lash of relativity and of nihilism on their backs.
