A Reflexive Calling: The Rise of Sociology and the Problem of Scientific Knowledge

The rise of sociology during the Nineteenth century represented not only the strengthening of new ways of understanding the reality of social problems. In this historical process, it is also possible to see the rise of new ways of comprehending the scientific knowledge, specially the problem of objectivity in social science fields in connection with the objectivity foundations of natural sciences. The sociological “Discours de la Méthode” can be observed and understood throughout the classic period as a proto-reflexive critical concern about the logical development of the scientific reasoning, both in natural and human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften). As a result of the classical sociological analysis of the scientific method as a way of consolidating the epistemic roots of social sciences reasoning, the sociology developed during the XIX century an important and unique capacity of comprehending “science through the scientific method”. Thus, in this paper we aim to develop a historical analysis of the rise of the critic and “reflexive vocation” of classic sociology as an important epistemic condition to the strengthening of the modern sociological conception of science in different fields of sociology like sociology of knowledge, sociology of science and sociology of scientific knowledge. In a first moment, the classics of sociology pointed out the “problem of knowledge” as an internal challenge to the development of a sociology as a scientific way of thinking; in a second moment, the contemporary sociology pointed out the “problem of knowledge” as a general difficulty to the whole scientific conception of reality, promoting a crisis in the logical demarcation of science in face of a real “social demarcation of knowledge”.