The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change

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Overview

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 ...
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More About This Book

Overview

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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Editorial Reviews

Library Journal
This astonishing book testifies to decades of research through the greater part of philosophy--East and West. Collins, a University of Pennsylvania sociologist who has written many basic theoretical works (Sociological Insight, Oxford Univ., 1992) attacks myths of the origin and spread of ideas about knowledge and the world. He demolishes at least two. One is that ideas flow ready-made from the heads of a few great men. The other is that ideas are created by "cultures." Collins shows again and again that small groups are the source of innovation. They are often stimulated by a single figure who tends to move from group to group, but several people make a contribution. Small factual errors inevitably turn up in such a book, but overall the research is deep and sound, and years of debate should lead to refinements. Right now, this is a mine of valuable information--meant for academic libraries but really fostering the oldest aims of the public library. Written without pretense or jargon, it reaches out to the ordinary reader, who could acquire a rich education in the humanities just by following it through.--Leslie Armour, Dominican Coll. of Philosophy & Theology, Ottawa
A.C. Grayling
. . .[B]reathtakingly comprehensive and ambitious. . .[however], he invariably takes on trust what is stated by commentators he has read. . .ignoring the energetic debate surrounding interpretation. . .although he is discussing the history of ideas, he all but ignores the ideas themselves. . .-- The New York Times Book Review
Anthony Quinton
An astonishing achievement... I plan to read the book again at leisure, concentrating on the fine structure rather than the overall picture.
—New York Review of Books
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780674001879
  • Publisher: Harvard University Press
  • Publication date: 3/28/2000
  • Series: Belknap Press Series
  • Edition number: 1
  • Pages: 1120
  • Sales rank: 689,606
  • Product dimensions: 6.30 (w) x 9.36 (h) x 2.08 (d)

Meet the Author

Randall Collins is Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
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
App. 3: Keys to Figures
Notes
References
Index of Persons
Index of Subjects
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