知识社会学研究的是观念的社会根源，以及盛行观念对社会的影响。

知识社会学一词首先被广泛用于20世纪20年代，当时，一些说德语的社会学家对此作了充分研究，其中著名的有德国价值学家马克斯·舍勒（Max Scheler）和卡尔·曼海姆（Karl Mannheim）（《意识形态和乌托邦》）。20世纪中期，功能主义在学术界占统治地位，知识社会学一直处于主流社会学的边缘领域。1960年代，尤其是在彼得·伯格（Peter Ludwig Berger）和汤姆斯·乐格曼（Thomas Luckmann）写了《现实的社会构建》（The Social Construction of Reality，1966）之后，该学科受到普遍重视，并仍是理解人类社会的重要方法。

The sociology of knowledge is the study of the relationship between human thought and the social context within which it arises, and of the effects prevailing ideas have on societies. It is not a specialized area of sociology but instead deals with broad fundamental questions about the extent and limits of social influences on individuals' lives and the social-cultural basics of our knowledge about the world. Complementary to the sociology of knowledge is the sociology of ignorance, including the study of nescience, ignorance, knowledge gaps, or non-knowledge as inherent features of knowledge making.