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III Mapping The Philosophy
To speak of this as a little company of genius would be to misread the sociological point entirely. It is the networks which write the plot of this story; and the structure of network competition over the attention space, which determines creativity, is focused so that the famous ideas become formulated through the mouths and pens of a few individuals. To say that the community of creative intellectuals is small is really to say that the networks are focused at a few peaks. The struggle of human beings to situate themselves high on such a peak, and the conditions which make those peaks few but interlinked, are the substance of the sociology of philosophies, and of intellectual life.
Randal Collins: Sociology of philosophies (2002, 78)
(A) Metaphilosophy
III Mapping The Philosophy
To speak of this as a little company of genius would be to misread the sociological point entirely. It is the networks which write the plot of this story; and the structure of network competition over the attention space, which determines creativity, is focused so that the famous ideas become formulated through the mouths and pens of a few individuals. To say that the community of creative intellectuals is small is really to say that the networks are focused at a few peaks. The struggle of human beings to situate themselves high on such a peak, and the conditions which make those peaks few but interlinked, are the substance of the sociology of philosophies, and of intellectual life.
Randal Collins: Sociology of philosophies (2002, 78)
(A) Metaphilosophy
Each philosopher eventually faces the questions 'what do philosophers do?’ or 'what is philosophy?'. Unfortunately, there is no clear consensus on the answers. Such a condition results in a certain cognitive dissonance: if we do not clearly understand what we are dealing with, we are forced to choose between the conclusions that either the specifics of philosophical work may not exist, or that we do not possess the skills to answer simple questions coherently. The second approach is defending the thesis that doing philosophy is too complex endeavor for a simple formulation, or, at least, that the examiner’s curiosity is unfortunately indicative of serious disinformation. This is a typical evasive move in the light of Popper's (1973) strategy of immunization.