Through network diagrams and sustained narrative, sociologist Randall Collins traces the development of philosophical thought from ancient Greece to modern Europe. Collins provides a self-reflexive sociological philosophy of intellectual life that opens a new path beyond relativism and realism. Illustrated.

This astonishing book testifies to decades of research through the greater part of philosophy-East and West...It reaches out to the ordinary reader, who could acquire a rich education in the humanities just by following it through.

The Sociology of Philosophies is a truly astonishing work of scholarship based on a vast global erudition...it offers rich, highly illuminating and provocative insights on a vast array of topics.

The one work that all sociologists of ideas, novices and veterans alike, hereafter must read It is beyond question Randall Collins' masterpiece.

Randall Collinsis Professor of Sociology at the <>University of Pennsylvania.

Preface

Acknowledgments

INTRODUCTION

THE SKELETON OF THEORY

Coalitions in the Mind

Networks across the Generations

Partitioning Attention Space: The Case of Ancient Greece

COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITIES
PART I: ASIAN PATHS

Innovation by Opposition: Ancient China

External and Internal Politics of the Intellectual World: India

Revolutions ofthe Organizational Base: Buddhist and Neo-Confucian China

Innovation through Conservatism: Japan

Conclusions to Part I: The Ingredients of IntellectualLife

COMPARATIVE HISTORY OF INTELLECTUAL COMMUNITIES
PART II: WESTERN PATHS

Tensions of Indigenous and Imported Ideas: Islam, Judaism, Christendom

Academic Expansion as a Two-Edged Sword: Medieval Christendom

Cross-Breeding Networks and Rapid-Discovery Science

Secularization and Philosophical Meta-territoriality

Intellectuals TakeControl of Their Base: The German University Revolution

The Post-revolutionary Condition: Boundaries as Philosophical Puzzles

Writers, Markets and AcademicNetworks: The French Connection

META-REFLECTIONS

Sequence and Branch in the Social Production of Ideas

Epilogue: Sociological Realism

Appendix 1: The Clustering of Contemporaneous Creativity

Appendix 2: The Incompleteness of OurHistorical Picture

Appendix 3: Keys to Figures

Notes

References

Index ofPersons

Index of Subjects