History of knowledge

Within academia, the history of knowledge is the field covering the accumulated and known human knowledge constructed or discovered during human history and its historic forms, focus, accumulation, bearers,^[1] impacts, mediations, distribution, applications, societal contexts, conditions^[2] and methods of production. It is related to, yet separate from, the history of science, the history of scholarship and the history of philosophy. The scope of the history of knowledge encompass all the discovered and created fields of human-derived knowledge such as logic, philosophy, mathematics, science, sociology, psychology and data mining.^[3]

The history of knowledge is an academic discipline that studies forms of knowledge in the recorded past.^[4] The discipline emerged in the 2000 as a response to the digital age and was formally recognised with the introduction of academic institutions such as Geschichte des Wissens.^[5] Academics within the field aim to research the forms, dissemination and production of knowledge with a focus on both "high" and "low" everyday knowledge.^[6] Research approaches are based on the theories of Michel Foucault with concepts like "orders of knowledge" and are similar to other fields with the use of social, cultural and political frameworks.^[7]

The formation of the discipline has roots in the 1950s history of science field and contemporary concepts can be identified in works that go back to the 15th century.^[8] The extent studied within the field is dynamic as seen from the research of confessional knowledge to the digital revolution.^[9] Concepts applied in this specialty such as "scientification" explain the transformation of information to knowledge.^[10] "Scientification" is related to the description of "raw" information given by Peter Burke.^[10] Peter Burke is listed among some of the canon authors in the field alongside Martin Mulsow, Pierre Bourdieu and Michel Foucault.^[3]