The Sociology of Philosophies

The Chinese, too, had their hot spots. The 4 generations of the late Warring States period from 365 to 235 b.c.e. contain 5 majo ...

The reader is free to reassign the boundaries between the ranks and reanalyze; I doubt this would materially change our picture ...

chief foil for attacks launching the self-consciously “modern” period of West- ern philosophy. Socrates, by contrast, was heroiz ...

takes at least that long for a significant change to take place in philosophical premises; and it takes at least another generat ...

to major intellectual networks, and their conflicts with their compatriots are not at all contrary to the usual dynamics of crea ...

who founded the T’ang dynasty. His contemporaries were very impressed: “Since the time of Confucius there has been nobody like h ...

fucians absorbed in political reform), but they serve to confirm our impression of intellectual routine in philosophy proper. Pe ...

historians. Nevertheless, I will not pursue “schools” of this sort. Transmission of intellectual influence certainly occurs, but ...

Greek philosophers Upstream links Downstream links Dominant (8) 3.8 4.0 Major (20) 2.0 2.2 Secondary (68) 1.3 1.0 Minor (237) 0. ...

China: secondary philosophers (61): 2 steps 4 steps Major or dominant philosophers upstream 0.6 1.0 Secondary philosophers upstr ...

upstream they connect to an average of 12 significant philosophers. The ordinary major philosophers (non-stars) in both places h ...

intellectual communities, then argue that the cause of their eminence is this connection? The answer is no; there is less circul ...

the city-states were undergoing major struggles over the establishment of democracy, and in which “tyrants”—who included a numbe ...

whatever eminent predecessors there were), to reduce their ranking would enhance the average connectedness among the truly emine ...

ideas were typically circulated in writing. Confucius’ sayings were written down as the Analects by the generation of his pupils ...

networks exist in modern European philosophy, right up through the twentieth century (see Figures 10.1 through 14.1). We still s ...

density of interactions among intellectuals drives up their energy—all the more so when famous names come together, rival sacred ...

Let us put this question aside for the moment. The main theoretical problem is not that what I have said so far is too sociologi ...

The structure of simultaneous and opposing creativity leads us on to the law of small numbers, and the struggle to divide the in ...

universities consisting exclusively of men, women had an intellectual role only in devotional religious movements and some of th ...