The moment of theory

The social reorganisation of the way in which knowledge was produced and underwritten that took place from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards led to the professionalisation of science with ‘scientists’ who became the custodians of specialised knowledge organised as academic disciplines within the framework of the new knowledge-producing European university. Towards the end of the century the sciences were joined by those disciplines that came to be organised under the banner ‘social sciences’ and, ultimately, also by those disciplines that came to be known as the humanities, i.e. those four groups of disciplines which R. S. Crane has called the ‘good arts’: