Introduction

Tamás Demeter

pp. 1-4

in: Tamás Demeter (ed), The origins of social theories of knowledge, Studies in East European Thought 64, 2012.

Abstract

The present issue of our journal aims to explore some aspects of the emerging aspiration in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to investigate various forms of knowledge with sensitivity to the sociological circumstances within which knowledge is generated and spread. Important tenets of this aspiration originated in the peculiar socio-cultural environment of East Central Europe, more precisely within the boundaries of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and since then these tenets have exerted important influence on subsequent developments in the sociology of religion, art, literature, and science.1 Although in their own time these insights were located both geographically and intellectually on the periphery, they have since become central in various sociological and sociologically inspired disciplines. Some of those taking the first isolated steps in these directions have since become classics; and some others were and continue to be important sources of inspiration for subsequent work.