The Sociology of Philosophies

(Wang) #1

make network contact in the core circles of the previous generation of creative
intellectuals, becoming introduced to the central lines of argument among rival
groups. It must catch a sense of the crystallization points in the network playing
out the law of small numbers as the focus of the attention space shifts. It would
do this not by some form of super-sophisticated calculation of network posi-
tions, but by being part of the network, attuned through the shifting levels of
EE in the items of CC that make up its flow of conversations. Our sociological
artificial intelligence creates by constructing a new conversation that combines
the cultural capital of several groups so as to maximize the EE level of each,
uniting the separate conversational rituals into one intensely focused ritual
commanding the attention of the network. It creates by making a new coalition
in the mind.


The Inner Lives of Intellectuals


Intellectual life, like everything else, takes place in a series of embedded levels.
Start at the center with a human body charged with emotions and conscious-
ness. Around him or her is the intellectual network and its dynamics, the
market opportunities for ideas which open up at particular times. Creativity
comes to those individuals optimally positioned to take advantage of these
opportunities. Since the situation is competitive, those who have the first
chances acquire an entrenched advantage in creative eminence; others are
constrained to become followers, or rivals taking the opposite tack from those
already taken by the leaders. Some who come too late remain challengers who
are squeezed out by the structure.
Surrounding the micro-core is the organizational base which makes it pos-
sible for intellectual networks to exist. The universities, publishers, churches,
regal patrons, and other suppliers of material resources set the numbers of
competitors in intellectual careers. Their organizational dynamics affect the
underlying shape of the intellectual field; especially fateful are times of crisis,
which rearrange career channels and provoke the reorganization of the atten-
tion space that underlies the epochs of greatest creativity.
Finally, there is the largest structure, the political and economic forces
which feed these organizations. This outermost level of macro-causality does
not so much directly determine the kinds of ideas created as give an impetus
for stability or change in the organizations which support intellectual careers,
and this molds in turn the networks within them.
At the center of these circles lies the creative experience: Hegel at his desk
on the night of October 12, 1806, struggling to finish his Phenomenology of
Spirit while the battle of Jena booms in the background. The intellectual alone,
reading or writing: but he or she is not mentally alone. His or her ideas are


Coalitions in the Mind • 51
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