The Sociology of Philosophies: A Global Theory of Intellectual Change

by Randall Collins

Book Overview

Randall Collins traces the movement of philosophical thought in ancient Greece, China, Japan, India, the medieval Islamic and Jewish world, medieval Christendom, and modern Europe. What emerges from this history is a social theory of intellectual change, one that avoids both the reduction of ideas to the influences of society at large and the purely contingent local construction of meanings. Instead, Collins focuses on the social locations where sophisticated...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0674001877
• ISBN13: 9780674001879
• Release Date: March 1998
• Publisher: Belknap Press
• Length: 1120 Pages
• Weight: 3.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 2.0" x 6.4" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A new way to view philosophy

I have a Ph.D. in history of philosophy, but I now follow it as an interested layman rather than a professional. In short, this review is written from the viewpoint of someone whose background and interests lie in philosophy rather than sociology. For me, this was an interesting and useful book for a couple of reasons: 1. It discusses philosophers in the context of social networks, where the thinkers are linked by relationships such as: was the student of, reacted against, was married to the sister of, etc. Often, philosophy is taught (or studied) by looking only at the works of philosophers, in isolation from the philosophers' relationships with others around them. Placing a philosopher in the context of a network of relationships helps considerably in understanding what the philosopher is trying to do, and why. In short, it can help you better to understand any particular philosopher that you are studying. 2. I found the author's notion of an "attention space" very interesting. The notion of an "attention space" in the history of philosophy seems to me similar to Thomas Kuhn's notion of a "paradigm" in the history of science. Philosophers' roles in the history of philosophy are described as moving the attention space, or elaborating within the attention space, and so on, where moving the attention space is comparable to Kuhn's "paradigm shift" and elaborating within the attention space is comparable to Kuhn's "normal science". This approach to the history of philosophy is, I think helpful. It gives you genuine insight into the history of philosophy. I recommend this book. You may not wish to read it all -- I didn't -- but if you dip into it here and there, at spots that look interesting to you, you will encounter ideas and concepts that are useful, stimulating and thought-provoking.

Great classroom reference

I received this welcome book free in the mail years ago with the suggestion that it be a text book for a philosophy course. While it certainly is an important, interesting book on philosophy, it offers little as a philosophy text book. But over the years I have found lots of opportunities to refer to it in class as a resource. Some specific things I find come up frequently: 1. The concept of the sociological cogito -- this strikes me as a wonderful way of applying Augustine, via Descartes' cogito via Leibniz, Hegel, Wittgenstein (private language argument) to interest the class on what we know for certain. It was the first I saw the argument presented this lucidly. 2. Applying the template of social networks to the development of ideas - and this I connect to current complex systems work such as Kennedy's Swarm Intelligence. I love passing the book around so everyone can see the network charts. 3. The relationship between points of view moving through intellectual space following standard patterns, much as Hegelian dialectic describes, but in easier terms. 4. Since I also routinely discuss sociologizing sociology, it certainly is fair that I discuss sociologizing philosophy as well. There is a disappointment: the book stops. Understood, the effort would have been a tremendous one as the information explosion changes the patterns. But this is precisely the concern. What changes with the information explosion? We did not have to touch Quine to be strongly influenced though meeting him was certainly an event to be remembered. This is an approach I would like to see explored further.

Reading Global History of Philosophy With a Thesis

For all interested in global history of philosophy, this is the book to get.First, each section on a particular philosophical tradition (e.g. ancient Greece, Indian, Medieval Islamic, Chinese, Modern) is an interesting high-level history of tradition in its own rights. This alone makes the price tag worthwhile. More importantly, Collins included very interesting insights about individual period that is not covered by other general histories:1) How some schools of thoughts become popular not because they are correct but because they are extreme2) Parallelisms that occur in different periods of the same tradition (e.g. Post-Shankara positions in India has its parallel during the hey-day of Buddhist philosophy)3) Parallelisms that occur across traditions (e.g. compelling coverage of how medieval Christian & Islamic philospophy shares a similar structure)With these characteristics, I think this book clearly satisfies the need us interested in global history of philosophy, for which Collins is clearly very passionate about.On the sociology theoretical piece, I think the theory is fine: it articulates a lot of aspects of which most students of philosophy has a vague sense. The theory is almost 'common sense'-- just that it doesn't seem to have been clearly articulated that way in academic circles. As such, the theory piece is less interesting, but it is not intruding and it provides a sound umbrella thesis for Collins' insights on individual traditions.Lastly, one point about the 'data' that Collins use-- the 'maps' that link the different philosophers in networks. I think it is interesting to read (because it includes a lot of interesting names-- familiar or otherwise), but they don't really provide the 'data' on which the sociological theory can be based. I think Collins himself recognized this-- and thus his appendix about the important 'isolates' like Ibn Sina.

Change as a constant...

'I am thinking' is irrefutable because 'I am not thinking' nevertheless displays oneself thinking. -- p. 858 The book 'The Sociology of Philosophies' purports to be 'The first comprehensive history of world philosophy,' as well as 'a social history of global intellectual life.' Collins in this book takes as his subject the whole of human intellectual endeavour, exploring the strands and developments of philosophical thought in all the major cultures of the world. Collins begins this weighty and, at times, hyper-intellectual tome by building a theory of intellectualism, ritual, education, and philosophical reflection. He identifies two of the longest and most dominant philosophical strands as being those arising in Greece and China. Collins posits the theory that intellectual pursuits do not arise in a vacuum, and are more of a societal and communal development than an individual pursuit or achievement. 'That ideas are not rooted in individuals is hard to accept because it seems to offend against a key epistemological point. Here the question is analytically distinct from the propensity to worship intellectual heroes.'However, when one looks at the history of ideas, they usually arise in groups. While there are certainly key individuals who arose at different times in history, it is also true that there are patterns -- the age of philosophy in Greece, the Renaissance in Italy, etc. There is a particular atmosphere and sociological aspect to the culture that encourages and develops intellectual development that is unique to each, and leads to differing developments. After exploring this history and the rituals of intellectuals and intellectualism (which is little acknowledged among scholars in the West), Collins explores who the major individuals are, who the minor individuals are, and what places they occupy in the chain of intellectual history. These chains are most pronounced in developments from Greece and developments from China; the Chinese strands continue through almost all subsequent Eastern thought, which is always responding to or reacting against key ideas formed there; in Western thought, almost all philosophical and intellectual development does the same with regard to the Greek development. Collins proceeds from this to a theoretical framework (in which he develops more closely the Greek philosophical reflective framework, being the one from which Collins was educated, and thus the dominant underpinning of his writing) that explores the importance and rarity of true creativity. From this, he continues, doing a comparative analysis of intellectual communities, drawing in, in addition to Ancient Greece and Ancient China, India, Japan, Neo-Confucian China, Medieval Christendom, Islamic philosophies, Jewish philosophical development, then surveying modern western philosophies, French, German, and British. Strong historical themes, political and other intellectual developments (such as the shift from faith-based to experimental-based know

Sociology of Philosophy Has Come of Age!

I was disappointed, but not entirely surprised, by A.C. Grayling's superficial grasp of Randall Collins's achievement in The Sociology of Philosophies (New York Times Sunday Book Review, 27 September). I write as someone who holds a doctorate in the history and philosophy of science but who now holds a professorial chair in sociology and works in the terrain staked out in Collins's book, which is often called "social epistemology." Grayling argues that Collins fails to appreciate the perennial character of philosophical argument because of his exclusive focus on the social networks that develop and transmit ideas. This is not quite right. Rather, Collins wants to explain this perenniality in terms of social networks. Given the vast numbers of philosophers, and the variety of arguments they have had over the last 2500 years, how is it that they seem reducible to a handful of general questions and representative figures? Grayling seems to believe that everybody has been asking the same questions but only very few have done a really good job answering them. Yet, it is little more than a finger exercise in the history and sociology of thought to show that posing questions in similar terms does not necessarily mean that the same question is being asked. And even figures as perennial as Plato and Aristotle have stood for different things at different times. The appearance of "depth" in philosophical matters that Grayling wishes to convey is, in sociological terms, shorthand for the collected means by which philosophers maintain their institutional presence. It is quite literally a myth, one comparable to the belief that priests are holier, or scientists smarter, than the run of humanity. However, it would be mistake -- again one that Grayling makes -- to conclude that Collins is merely concerned more with the social context surrounding the philosophical ideas than the ideas themselves. On the contrary, for Collins, sociology is essential for understanding the nature of philosophical ideas and argument, especially what counts as a good answer to a question. This explains why the perception of philosophical depth and superficiality has varied so much in history. For example, Grayling claims that we are now making "slow progress" on the problem of mind. Yet, only a generation ago -- under the influence of Ryle and Wittgenstein -- it was fashionable to hold that this was a pseudo-problem. What changed in the interim were the criteria of a good answer. Philosophers have become much more accountable to the findings of experimental science, on the one hand, and the experiences of diversely situated cultures, on the other. A solution to the problem of mind that satisfies both constituencies will be, indeed, difficult. But from a sociological standpoint, "depth" is a euphemism for philosophy's insecure institutional position, which requires that it