almost no one who is isolated on both dimensions. In all of world history there
are only three significant philosophers who fill this description: Wang Ch’ung
in China; Bassui Tokusho in Japan; and Ibn Khaldun in Islam. All are secon-
dary figures in the influence they have exerted in the history of their respective
philosophical communities. Bassui is one of the few notable Zen monks during
a period (1365–1600) when the spiritual innovativeness of Japanese Buddhism
was in decline. Wang Ch’ung stands out as an oasis in the desert of intellectual
networks of the Later Han dynasty. There is some thematic competition
nevertheless, in that his aggressively secularizing rationalism is structured in
counterpoint to the occultism of his times, and carries on the battles of the
Old Text school of a few generations earlier. Ibn Khaldun is somewhat similar,
an opponent of the scholasticizing curriculum which by his day had dominated
the Islamic madrasas for several centuries. Both Wang Ch’ung and Ibn Khaldun
were advocates of empirical methods; Ibn Khaldun implemented this with a
wide-ranging achievement as historian and comparative sociologist. Under
these structural circumstances their successful creativity is mysterious. But it
may be partially understandable in theme. Without philosophical networks and
important contemporary rivals, it appears impossible to carry on work at
higher levels of metaphysical abstraction; criticism and empiricism may be the
only direction open in which something notable could be done.
The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity^ •^889