From the beginning of its career in the 1920s, the term "sociology of knowledge" has been a misnomer. In the first place, "sociology of knowledge" is a bad translation of the German "Wissenssoziologie," the dictionary to the contrary notwithstanding: both terms are narrower in English than in German. "Sociology," at least at the time the term "Wissenssoziologie" was coined, was less far removed from philosophy than it is in the Anglo-Saxon world and has since become to some extent in German sociology as well; it is, or was, not so sharply distinguished from social philosophy. But more important, and also more clearcut, is the difference between "knowledge" and "Wissen." For "knowledge" refers predominantly if not exclusively to positive or scientific knowledge, whereas the German term also covers such kinds of knowledge as philosophical, metaphysical, theological, artistic, or religious. The term "sociology of knowledge" thus means or connotes something other than its original.