| Physical description |
xix, 1098 pages : illustrations, maps ; 24 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 1035-1068) and indexes. |
| 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. |
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App. 1. The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity -- App. 2. The Incompleteness of Our Historical Picture. |
| Summary |
Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, sociologist Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought from ancient Greece to modern Europe. Collins provides a self-reflexive sociological philosophy of intellectual life that opens a new path beyond relativism and realism. Illustrated. |
| Subject |
Knowledge, Sociology of.
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Philosophy -- History.
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Comparative civilization.
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Philosophers -- Social networks.
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| ISBN |
0674816471 (cloth : alk. paper) |
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0674816471 (cloth) |
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0674001877 (paperback) |
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