The sociology of philosophies A global theory of intellectual change

Winner of the 2000 AESA [American Educational Studies Association] Critics' Choice Award

Winner of the 1999 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award sponsored by the American Sociological Association

Winner, Association of American Publishers 1998 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Award in the Category of Sociology and Anthropology




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.
Preface

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

THE SKELETON OF THEORY

Coalitions in the Mind

Networks across the Generations

Partitioning Attention Space: The Case of Ancient Greece

COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITIES
PART I: ASIAN PATHS

Innovation by Opposition: Ancient China

External and Internal Politics of the Intellectual World: India

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

Innovation through Conservatism: Japan

Conclusions to Part I: The Ingredients of Intellectual Life



COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITIES
PART II: WESTERN PATHS

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

Academic Expansion as a Two-Edged Sword: Medieval Christendom

Cross-Breeding Networks and Rapid-Discovery Science

Secularization and Philosophical Meta-territoriality

Intellectuals Take Control of Their Base: The German University Revolution

The Post-revolutionary Condition: Boundaries as Philosophical Puzzles

Writers, Markets and Academic Networks: The French Connection

META-REFLECTIONS

Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas

Epilogue: Sociological Realism

Appendix 1: The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity

Appendix 2: The Incompleteness of Our Historical Picture

Appendix 3: Keys to Figures

Notes

References

Index of Persons

Index of Subjects