This study of knowledge in the social sciences and library and information science is also an analysis of discursive power and the exclusionary force it exerts. It investigates the relationship between knowledge and power, and the influence each has on the other. The book attempts to judge philosophical discourse both by way of description and by way of suggesting a strategy for the evaluation of past and present thought and a direction for the future. The first part of the book adopts a sceptical view of past discourse and the latter part outlines a means to genuine knowledge.