The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change
Randall Collins traces the movement of philosophical thought in ancient Greece, China, Japan, India, the medieval Islamic and Jewish world, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe. What emerges from this history is a social theory of intellectual change, 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.
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The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change
Randall Collins traces the movement of philosophical thought in ancient Greece, China, Japan, India, the medieval Islamic and Jewish world, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe. What emerges from this history is a social theory of intellectual change, 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.
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The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change
Randall Collins traces the movement of philosophical thought in ancient Greece, China, Japan, India, the medieval Islamic and Jewish world, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe. What emerges from this history is a social theory of intellectual change, 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.
Randall Collins is Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, at the University of Pennsylvania.
Table of Contents
Contents Preface Acknowledgments Introduction The Skeleton of Theory 1. Coalitions in the Mind 2. Networks across the Generations 3. Partitioning Attention Space: The Case of Ancient Greece Part I: Asian Paths 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 Conclusions to Part I: The Ingredients of Intellectual Life Part II: Western Paths 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. Writers’ Markets and Academic Networks: The French Connection Meta-Reflections 15. Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas Epilogue: Sociological Realism 1. The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity 2. The Incompleteness of Our Historical Picture 3. Keys to Figures Notes References Index of Persons Index of Subjects
