Mapping Big Thinkers and Their Ideas

Viewing Clusters Over Time Provides Insights into Networks of Influence

To understand where ideas come from and how they evolve over time, sociologist Randall Collins mapped the networks of 3,000 philosophers and mathematicians, a yeoman project that took him on a 25-year journey across the globe, seeking insights into the histories and inner workings of societies and the thinkers who shaped them.

More recently, Grant Oliveira, a data analytics consultant with an interest in the origins of philosophical thought, embarked on a project to corral the universe of philosophers that exist on the web, namely via their Wikipedia profiles. …

By Tom Cohen | February 21, 2017

You Never Get One Isolated Great Thinker at a Time

Sociologist Randall Collins on Creativity Clusters and the Importance of Good Questions

Interview by Lisa Margonelli | February 21, 2017

Randall Collins’ curiosity about where ideas come from led him to do 25 years of research on the networks that connected thinkers and ideas through history and across continents. Collins, …

VIDEO: Are You an Optimist?

Charles Taylor on Hope as a Matter of Faith and Morality

November 28, 2016

It’s harder to be an optimist when times are uncertain than when they are relatively sunny. Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor, professor emeritus at McGill University, explains the sources of …

VIDEO: Where Is Multiculturalism Working?

Charles Taylor On How The Enthusiasm of Successful Immigrants Affirms Native Pride

November 28, 2016

Multiculturalism has become a loaded word, with cities like Paris and Brussels becoming emblematic of the failure of the ideal of different cultures and religions living together. Canadian philosopher …

Charles Taylor Ruined My Perfectly Good Consulting Career

How Reading the Philosopher's Sources of the Self Put My Own Sense of Self Through the Wringer

By Chris Bloor | November 28, 2016

I first met Charles Taylor when I was a graduate student at McGill University in Montreal in 1984.

His classes were like nothing I had encountered as an undergraduate at Oxford …

How Intimacy Fuels Intellectual Breakthroughs

Canadian Philosopher Charles Taylor’s Friendship With Indian Scholars Has Inspired Bold Ideas for Over 40 Years

By Rajeev Bhargava | November 28, 2016

It was, fittingly, through Hegel that I first met Charles Taylor in Oxford. In 1977, I began a post-graduate thesis on Hegel. In love with Western Marxism at that time, …

philosophy