The Sociology of Philosophies

sophical contemporaries other than the secondary figure Miskawayh, but he
is matched with scientific stars, and his own work is to a considerable extent
in science (see Figure 8.2 and the discussion in Chapter 8). Al-Ghazali lived in
a time when the Islamic intellectual world was closing down into religious
dogmatism; nevertheless, very close to him in time and space is the famous
mathematician and philosophical poet ÀUmar Khayyam.
There are more exceptions among secondary philosophers:

Horizontal isolates (lack of significant rivals):

Hasan al-Basri 720 c.e. Iraq

Abu Hanifa 750 Iraq

Ibn Taymiyah 1320 Damascus

Ibn Khaldun 1380 Algeria, Egypt

Bassui 1380 Japan

Ikkyu 1450 Japan

Alan of Lille 1180 Paris

Cusanus 1450 Germany, Italy

Vertical isolates (lack of significant network ties):

Bahya ibn Paquda 1050 c.e. Spain

Ibn Hazm 1080 Córdoba

Ibn Khaldun 1380 Algeria, Egypt

Bassui 1380 Japan

Peter Damiani 1050 Italy

Lull 1280 Spain, France

Bruno 1580 Italy, England, Germany

Boehme 1620 Germany

Vico 1720 Italy

Paley 1780 England

Mach 1880 Prague

Bruno may not belong on this list if in fact he is connected to the network at
Naples deriving from Telesio in the previous generation, or with the other
radical Dominicans from whom Campanella emerged (see Figure 9.6 in Chap-
ter 9).
On the whole, there are relatively few philosophers in world history who
are isolates of either kind. In six long-term networks (Greece, China, Japan,
Islam, Christendom, Europe), 114 philosophers are listed as major figures; of
these between 4 and 8 (Confucius, Mo Ti, Wang Yang-ming; Carneades,
Porphyry, Proclus; Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali) have no important contemporary rivals
(the lower figure if we admit the importance of nearby figures for Wang
Yang-ming, Carneades, Ibn Sina, and al-Ghazali). There are even fewer net-

The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity^ •^887