famous in Europe), as well as the theosophical hybrids with ShiÀite and other
sects. The indigenous Muslim intellectuals had distinctive and ultimately more
powerful bases: the theologians at the mosques, the Sufi movements in the
general populace. Eventually the madrasas combined into their curriculum the
content of most of these networks, though excluding most of the Greek
tradition of science. But the most famous thinkers from these theologically
oriented networks also tend to be only a few links away from the scientists.
The anti-philosopher al-Ghazali is two links away from the mathematician
ÀUmar Khayyam; the leading theosophists and mystics are only a link or two
from the cosmopolitan philosopher-scientists.
Why should contact with the scientific network be so important for phi-
losophers? It was not transmitting a specific cultural capital, for the philoso-
phies of al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Averroës, and the others owed nothing to the
algebraic breakthroughs of the mathematicians; at best they incorporated an
astronomical vision into their hierarchical cosmologies. Al-Ghazali and the
mystics al-Hallaj and Suhrawardi were even less concerned with scientific
content. There is, however, a sociological pattern: in the Islamic networks, as
elsewhere, the major philosophers are closer to the scientific networks than the
secondary philosophers. A larger proportion of the major philosophers were
themselves active in science, although usually with only minor success.
The leading philosophers were interested in science because of a coincidence
among cosmopolitan orientations. Mathematics, astronomy, and other sciences
are cosmopolitan topics, detached from the particulars of theology and value
theory. The network of scholars assembling scientific texts at Baghdad, then
migrating from home to home for almost 20 generations, began as an inter-
sectarian network of Christians, Babylonian star worshippers, Zoroastrians,
and Muslim travelers to India and Byzantium. In the later period, after the
suppression of most of the non-Muslim religions, the core network was medi-
ated by cosmopolitans among the Jews. Correspondingly, the major philoso-
pher was the one whose ideas had the most general scope; and this came from
bringing together links from the most diverse networks. Contact with the
cosmopolitan scientific network became the intellectual base for all the more
universalistic Islamic philosophers. And since creativity occurs by negation as
well as by synthesis, even the anti-scientists and anti-cosmopolitans had their
greatest originality when they were shaped by conflict with cosmopolitan
scientists or the networks connecting to them; this is so even if the result was
to promote a mystical or particularistic alternative, as among many prominent
Muslim and Jewish conservatives. Conversely, the energy of focused network
conflicts among philosophers, and the drive toward philosophical abstraction,
helped promote creativity on the scientific side.
By itself, philosophers’ interest in science does not guarantee that science
Cross-Breeding Networks and Rapid-Discovery Science • 547