CHAPTER 10
£Cross-Breeding Networks and
Rapid-Discovery Science
In comparison to what went before, modern European philosophy comes on
with a bang. Creativity revives in many directions, beginning around 1600,
and is sustained for generations. Not least is the core of abstract philosophy
itself. There is a takeoff in epistemology, which becomes much more thorough
and central than in any previous philosophical community. Metaphysics too
has a surprising rebirth, often spurred by the new epistemology. Value theory
flourishes along aggressive new paths in aesthetics, ethics, and political phi-
losophy. All this happened with an explicitly innovative consciousness that
contrasts with the surreptitious character of creativity in most earlier epochs.
In addition, and most spectacularly, there is the scientific revolution of the
same period. This overlaps with the networks of philosophers, especially in its
formative generations. Henceforward science becomes a key reference point,
whether positive or negative, for philosophers. Science rearranges the rest of
intellectual space.
Why all this innovation? Our general theory holds that creativity results
when intellectual networks reorganize, and this happens in opposing factions
simultaneously. We expect not a uniform zeitgeist but a changing array of
oppositions. In the two-step flow of causality, network reorganization is driven
by institutional changes in the material bases of intellectual life. In this revo-
lutionary period, there are two major structural changes:
- Specialized branches of the intellectual networks concerned with natu-
ralistic knowledge suddenly attract wide attention, then gradually separate off
into a distinctive form of intellectual organization, leaving behind a sparer but
more clearly delineated activity of philosophy. This is conventionally called the
scientific revolution, but it will need considerable unpacking. There is a double
revolution, a takeoff in mathematics as well as in science, with the mathematics
revolution building up several generations earlier. In what does this double
revolution consist as a social reorganization of intellectual practice? It is not
simply a new focus on knowledge of nature, nor a heightened intensity of em-
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