文档介绍：THE SOCIOLOGY
OF PHILOSOPHIES
THE SOCIOLOGY
OF PHILOSOPHIES
A Global Theory
of Intellectual Change
£
RANDALL COLLINS
THE BELKNAP PRESS OF
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Cambridge, Massachusetts, and London, England
Copyright © 1998 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Fourth printing, 2002
First Harvard University Press paperback edition, 2000
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Collins, Randall, 1941–
The sociology of philosophies : a global theory of intellectual
change / Randall Collins.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-81647-1 (cloth)
ISBN 0-674-00187-7 (pbk.)
1. Knowledge, Sociology of. 2. Philosophy—History.
3. Comparative civilization. 4. Philosophers—works.
I. Title.
1998
′2′09—dc21 97-18446
In every hair there are an infinite number of lions, and
in addition all the single hairs, together with their infinite
number of lions, in turn enter into a single hair. In this
way the progression is infinite, like the jewels in Celestial
Lord Indra’.
Fa-tsang (T’ang Dynasty)
Homer was wrong in saying, “Would that strife might
perish from among gods and humans.” For if that were
to occur, all things would cease to exist.
Heraclitus
Contents
Preface xvii
Acknowledgments xxi
Introduction 1
THE SKELETON OF THEORY
1 Coalitions in the Mind 19
General Theory of Interaction Rituals 20
The Interaction Rituals of Intellectuals 24
The Opportunity Structure 37
The Sociology of Thinking 46
works across the Generations 54
The Rarity of Major Creativity 54
Who Will Be Remembered? 58
What Do Minor Philosophers Do? 61
The Structural Mold of Intellectual Life: Long-Term Chains
in China and Greece 64
The Importance of Personal Ties 68
The Structural Crunch 74
3 Partitioning Attention Space:
The Case of Ancient Greece 80
The Intellectual Law of Small Numbers 81
Th