The sociology of philosophies : a global theory of intellectual change / Randall Collins.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Collins, Randall, 1941-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Knowledge, Sociology of.

Philosophy--History.

Philosophy.

Comparative civilization.

Philosophers--Social networks.

Philosophers.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xix, 1098 p. ) ill., maps ;

Other Title:

Global theory of intellectual change

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, MA : Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1998.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought in China, Japan, India, ancient Greece, the medieval Islamic and Jewish world, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe. What emerges from this history is a general theory of intellectual life, one that avoids both the reduction of ideas to the influences of society at large and the purely contingent local construction of meanings. Instead, Collins focuses on the social locations where sophisticated ideas are formed: the patterns of intellectual networks and their inner divisions and conflicts. According to his theory, when the material bases of intellectual life shift with the rise and fall of religions, educational systems, and publishing markets, opportunities open for some networks to expand while others shrink and close down. It locates individuals - among them celebrated thinkers like Socrates, Aristotle, Chu Hsi, Shankara, Wirt Henstein, and Heidegger - within these networks and explains the emotional and symbolic processes that, by forming coalitions within the mind, ultimately bring about original and historically successful ideas."--BOOK JACKET.

Contents:

1. Coalitions in the Mind

2. Networks across the Generations

3. Partitioning Attention Space: The Case of Ancient Greece

4. Innovation by Opposition: Ancient China

5. External and Internal Politics of the Intellectual World: India

6. Revolutions of the Organizational Base: Buddhist and Neo-Confucian China

7. Innovation through Conservatism: Japan

8. Tensions of Indigenous and Imported Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom

9. Academic Expansion as a Two-Edged Sword: Medieval Christendom

10.\ Cross-Breeding Networks and Rapid-Discovery Science

11. Secularization and Philosophical Meta-territoriality

12. Intellectuals Take Control of Their Base: The German University Revolution

13. The Post-revolutionary Condition: Boundaries as Philosophical Puzzles

14. Writer's Markets and Academic Networks: The French Connection

15. Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas

Epilogue: Sociological Realism

App. 1. The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity

App. 2. The Incompleteness of Our Historical Picture.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 1035-1068) and indexes.

ISBN:

0-674-02977-1

Publisher Number:

2027/heb31532 hdl