is that two-link connections may be providing cultural capital as well as emotional
energy, and four-link connections are important mainly because of the structural
effects of belonging to a dense creative chain or community; they may shape
creative energy but do not significantly transmit cultural capital.
- The chart might scatter major and minor figures about with no ties among them;
this, of course, would mean not that they had no social contacts at all, but that
their immediate circles, teachers, and pupils are too unimportant to appear on
the chart. The isolates actually appearing in the network charts are given in Ap-
pendix 1.
- On various lists, down through late antiquity, the number of sages varies, some-
times to 10, and the membership fluctuates. Thales, along with Solon, is the most
constant across all lists.
- Confucius (fl. 480 b.c.e.) was deified in the mid-Han dynasty, and his cult received
official recognition from around 60 c.e. until the end of the dynasty (200 c.e.),
and again from the mid-Tang (ca. 700) onwards. Mencius (fl. 320 b.c.e.) was
worshipped in Confucian temples after about 1100 c.e., Chu Hsi after 1241 and
again following political interruptions from 1313 onwards (Fung, 1952–53: 2:534;
Needham, 1956: 31).
- Undoubtedly later figures also have had their reputations swollen by the success of
their long-term followers. Socrates is so celebrated because many schools branched
off from him, and his fame was highest during the time when those schools
flourished. Plato’s dominant standing, above other major philosophers, is partly
due to the Neoplatonic school, which used him as a legitimating figure for doctrines
that diverged fairly substantially from his own emphases. But here we are just
adding glory to glory. Socrates, Plato, and other cases of this sort that one could
mention—for instance Mencius, Chu Hsi, and the Tao Te Ching author—are
unquestionably major creators of new ideas; they mark turning points in the
networks of their own day, and are not merely emblems for turning points which
happen later, although this is also true.
- See the cases cited in Chapter 1, note 7; or the section “A Cascade of Creative
Circles” in Chapter 10. In European philosophy, where biographical data are most
abundant, there are relatively few connections which consist only in a “clubbing
together” of the famous. For instance, Hume brought Rousseau to England in
1766, at the end of both their creative lives. But both Hume and Rousseau had
other important network connections earlier, noted in Figure 11.1. Where contacts
consist only of this “club of the famous,” I have not included such ties in the
network charts.
- Chinese books at this time were written on pieces of bamboo tied together with
cords, and hence were rather bulky.
- Guthrie (1961–1982: 2:388); Hadas (1954: 64–67). Anaxagoras’ book was on sale
in Athens for a drachma, relatively cheap at about a day’s wage for a skilled worker.
There were professional copyists at Athens, and by 50 b.c.e. at Rome; in Cicero’s
day one way to acquire a book was to borrow it from someone else and set one’s
slaves to copying it (Rawson, 1985: 42–45). Libraries began to be collected, at first
within the philosophical schools themselves, at the time of Aristotle. The Hellenistic
Notes to Pages 69–72^ •^953
