An important division in epistemology is that between EMPIRICISM and RATIONALISM or IDEALISM. Whilst empiricists make our direct experience of the world the basis of all knowledge, rationalists and idealists argue that our knowledge of the world is governed by fixed and a priori concepts or CATEGORIES (e.g. conceptions of'S ubstance’, ‘causality’) which structure our every thought and argument and therefore our experience or perception of reality (see also KANT).
In most forms of epistemology, the pure thought of the individual thinking ‘ego’, the philosopher, has been taken as providing the route to the ultimate understanding of knowledge and the bedrock on which the epistemological theory advanced is based (see DESCARTES). Recently, however, more sociological forms of epistemology have emerged which have sought to ‘decentre’ the role played by the traditional individual 'S ubject’ in philosophy (see SUBJECT AND OBJECT, SUBJECT, STRUCTURALISM, DECONSTRUCTION), emphasizing instead the way in which knowledge is shaped by social structure, FORMS OF LIFE, etc. Thus the way is now open for much of the ground previously occupied by philosophy to be taken over by sociological accounts of knowledge and of science (see SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE, SOCIOLOGY OF SCIENCE, KUHN, FEYERABEND).
Since any theory of knowledge must of necessity refer also to itself, it would be wrong to suggest that sociological theories of knowledge can any more avoid the element of circularity that must attend any theory of knowledge than could traditional philosophy. What such a sociological theory can however achieve is to dispense with the tendency to dogmatic closure in epistemological thinking of a kind which so often have been apparent in more traditional theories, with their claims to have reached bedrock. Once knowledge, including scientific knowledge, is seen clearly as a socially constructed phenomenon, the expectation of any final doctrines about the nature of knowledge can be seen as misplaced. See also SCIENCE.