The founder of the history of ideas

Comments (22)

1. I have always enjoyed his work

2. You might want to take a look at Lovejoy’s “The Great Chain of Being,” which is a history of that particular idea.

3. Yes. I should have done it years ago. His work had a great influence on me when I started. I need to read it before doing anything on J.F Campbell’s “fairy egg”.

4. “Unit ideas” sound remarkably like “memes.”

5. Number of ways to define a meme it would seem. This below is more related to the chain than the things that hang upon it.

   “How many gradations may be traced between a stupid Huron or a Hottentot, and a profound philosopher? Here the distance is immense -but Nature has occupied the whole by almost infinite shades of discrimination.”

   William Smellie (1790)

   On the importance of being an orangutang.

   http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-iarticle_query?1975HisSc..13….1B&data_type=PDF_HIGH&whole_paper=YES&type=PRINTER&filetype=.pdf

6. Unit- idea (often a one word name) does seem to fit the barnacle goose. Although Ive not read much on it so far.

   “no possibilities which remain eternally possible will go unrealized”

   I understand it’s from Aristotle.

7. Synchronicity, man! The description in the article of A.O.L.’s contention that you had to know about the developements in astronomy meshed with something I was reading last night. Hugh Kenner (Joyce and Pound scholar who used to be an English professor at …Johns Hopkins!) gave the Massey Lectures some time in the 1990s: published as “The Elsewhere Community” in 1998(*). In them he discussed Milton. As a young man Milton apparently visited the elderly Galileo, and “Paradise Lost” Book I, lines 284-291, describing Satan’s shield, liken it to the moon as viewed through the “Tuscan artist”‘s “optic glass.”
   —
   (*) Try an ABS store if looking for a copy in Australia: the ABC apparently broadcast the lectures.

   1. I did not know that Milton even knew any scientists, let alone that he visited GG. Wow.

8. I clearly have a lot to read and Ive not exactly been slack so far. I was stunned by reading about Lovejoy how close my views seem to be. I did read his material on Monboddo very carefully, he is a very capable historian. But that was years ago. I must have taken more onboard than I thought.

   I must confess a lot of what I was doing just seemed to start to come together and meet up over the weekend. This is like one more bomb.
   Rather nice.

   Many thanks to John and Bill and you Allen.
   Much food for thought.

9. Right alongside Lovejoy, I think Collingwood’s contributions shaped what has become the History of Ideas.

   Now I’m curious and will need to do a bit of research. Was there any significant interaction between Lovejoy and Collingwood?

   1. Not as far as I can tell. L seemed to dispute some of C’s subjectivism in history. I read both as an undergrad, which probably explains why my mind is so corrupted by history…

10. Incidentally, here is an interesting article on why Lovejoy is no longer thought well of, and a critique of the critics.

    While I have abandoned the notion of a “unit idea” in abstract, I do think that cultural ideas get passed on more or less entire as packages from time to time. That forms a tradition – when it doesn’t happen, it isn’t a tradition that gets formed (not unlike species in biology…)

    1. Ive not read him fully. But the thing that interests me most is he reminds me of Lord Monboddo in someways. I can see why lord M. would have been an attractive figure for him.
       But Ive not read him fully so I may be overstating that claim.

       Odd, given the critisism regarding denial of an individual voice. Which is a valid response certainly with regard to Foucault who appears to have drawn from Lovejoy. Lovejoy I suspect the same will hold.

       With unit ideas if again Foucault is a development on this theme, it’s simply too brittle an idea. But it’s still interesting to see how such ideas have been discussed and recieved in the past.

       I am enjoying reading his work. I must go back and look at Monboddo at somepoint and see if their is indeed an influence. I had wondered if Foucault had spent some time with James Burnett. Perhaps the link lie’s with Lovejoy.

       But as Foucault had to keep up the claim of ignoring individual voices he has a tendancy to avoid such discussions in his work.

       It’s still an enjoyable book to read though. Ive sort of avoided reading secondary material.
       So it would appear a good place to start.

       As the material Ive been looking at is not similar but not unrelated to what he is discussing
       It will be interesting to see where similarities and diffrences appear as indeed will looking at more modern perspectives.

       I think I still prefer maintianing an ethnological rather than a full historical perspective.

11. Lovejoy’s project is opposed not only by the contextualism of Skinner and Pocock but more generally by the assumption that ideas are not the motors of history, that they are mere ‘superstructure’ determined in the last instance by social or economic forces. On this view, the history of ideas is not so much wrong as hopelessly superficial, whatever you decide about the validity of unit ideas—reading American essays on Lovejoy, you’d sometimes think that there had been no such person as Marx or at least that the notion of ideology collapsed along with the Berlin wall.

    There’s a very interesting debate about this issue going on right now apropos the Enlightenment and its relationship to the great revolutions at the end of the 18th Century. Were the philosophers and their new-fangled ideas responsible or were they merely an epiphenomenon of something deeper? Jonathan Israel, a Princeton prof, has been making the case for the determinative role of ideas, at least in this one crucial passage of history. He attempts to show the decisive role that a constellation of ideas deriving partly from Pierre Bayle’s writings but especially from Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus played in the 18th and 19th centuries. Reading him reminded me of that old bit about no girl every having been ruined by a book, except that according to Israel, a couple of centuries can be seduced by a treatise. Israel explains his theoretical approach in the beginning of his Enlightenment Contested; but what is impressive in his work are not the abstract arguments but the empirical evidence he educes over a couple of thousand pages in several books to show how ideas were crucial in a one specific but very important instance.

12. Prof Israel sounds like he is looking at the full inflection range and emotional register of the stage he is working on.

    Its the high inflection points of speech, which are pleasing and draw attention to the idea or image and dictates pitch and pace to such an extent. How the text is hit and projected. What ideas or images lie behind it and move the performance forward.

    Depending of course on the mood and make-up of the crowd to some extent as well. As inflection will vary depending on the attentiveness of the audience.

    Thats the language of the theatre rather than that of some 20th century approaches in philosophy.

13. The thing is that ideas must have some influence on behaviour, unless you take a totally Marxian deterministic view. I wrote my history as if the ideas were transmitted (for whatever reason) and so ideas at one time influenced ideas at another. I do not subscribe the the epiphenomenon thesis, but I do not reject it in my history.

    However I find it rather hard to understand how an enterprise like science could possibly be interpreted as if ideas had no causal influence. Anyone who observes science must think that the reason why student A thinks X is because student A was taught X by teacher T, or shown how to do Y, and so on. Even if there is a socioeconomic distal explanation, the proximal explanation in one of cultural transmission. I am unable to respond to anyone who thinks otherwise (and why would I need to anyway?).

14. I’m not aware of any historian, Marxist or otherwise, who thinks that ideas have no causal efficacy at all, especially when it is a matter of the effect of ideas on ideas. I take it that the serious argument is rather different and involves assessing whether, under what circumstances, and to what extent ideas, especially philosophical ideas, account for major social and political changes. What interests me about Israel’s work is the way in which he looks at a particular but extremely important case and traces out who read who and how ideas actually spread.

15. I was not making that suggestion. Its the ideas you see reflected in the text that dictates inflection.

    Its the idea that forms the core and shapes the rest.

    With a script you often have a choice. Do you go for what the writer intended or do you change it for a contemporary (and you certainly can) Audience. This is done by modifying inflection. In fact you can change a text to quite a large degree.

    It would suggest that transmition is far from static and is always affected by specific context and historical conditions with regard to ideas.
    i.e you can introduce a new idea into an older text in a performance.

    Texts can be changed modified or new ones written. Oral material given the limitations of memory may retain the same words but be inflected in a very diffrent manner giving it a very diffrent sense.

    I think the way I was taught to work with texts in this manner applies as much to history as it does to ethnology. The methods are pretty much the same as I was taught at uni. the only diffrence is the language used and that it would appear to make a diffrence when it comes to considering memes, unit ideas etc.

    I am not attempting to make some claim that science or any subject is some rehtorical repitition or performance.

    I am working out how I can use what Ive been taught to analyse text with regard to spoken material in a pure literary or historical context.

    It appears to work without issue and does not contradict the empirical manner I was trained in as a historian. It would seem to complement it.
    You have to do far more closer and detailed reading in my first form of study than you do as an undergrad at university.

    I thought this line made that clear in the last post.

    “What ideas or images lie behind it and move the performance forward.”

    But I did not include that the ideas do not have to be contained in the text. They can be new.

    1. Sorry for any confusion. I was addressing something John had written.

       The subtext of my comments was this: you often encounter claims that somebody’s writings are responsible for something that happens a century later as in the familiar anti-evolutionary bit about Darwinism and the Nazis. That specific claim seems to be quite absurd to anybody familiar with the history of the last couple hundred years and also apparently implies an extremely idealistic theory of history in which philosophical, theological, or scientific ideas are at the root of what happens. But if we don’t go whole hog the other way and insist that ideas are just froth on the ocean of time, the question arises of how to figure out when and how abstract thinking does change things on a big scale. Israel shows how much work it takes to make a serious run at this problem in one important case.

       1. Got it. Ive not read Lovejoy enough other than to suspect from the introduction that it had a big effect on Faucault, who I had to read but did not like in the end.

          Certainly in what I look at, philosophical, theological and perspectives from natural history can be mixed with local context sensitive cultural material. It gives the idea/ belief, extra substantive hit points if it is used for ideological support. Its in the public space (a concept itself subject to significant diffrence depending on period) where many areas of abstract thought seem to mix, that is of most interest to me. Its a different focus. But the same background understanding of subjects would appear to be required from the sciences, philosophy and history as well as those from performance.

          I don’t think people accept ideas like sleeping zombies. They do have to be grounded in something that can at least give the appearance of logic.

          Take the amount of constant propoganda the Nazi’s had to engage in. The effort in keeping such institutions on it’s feet is incredible I think. It requires considerable resources and continual monitoring and policing.

          I would suggest Darwin does not require the same amount of effort (well it may seem that way at times) but their is a distinct and fundamental diffrence. Darwin is very clearly demonstrated. It is already in the world around us, their is no need to fill the world with fictive events or creatures to support his conclusions.

          Ive certainly got issue’s with context in my own work. Historical depth means I can identify themes and follow them up. The history of legal involvment in what I look at I find particularly intresting as it’s early and continues with regard to certain aspects of speech.

          But I end up with a wide scatter of material with far more detail needed to flesh it out. I may find in the end I just hit one subject at the end of the late 17th cen.

          I must look at Isreal’s approach and see if I can take anything from it and adapt it to my own subject.

16. “I do think that cultural ideas get passed on more or less entire as packages from time to time.”

    Yes I think it will be common particulary in the context of a performance. The performer will want the full register (it’s full inflection range) or as much as possible as it means he can appeal to a wide group with a restricted range of material.

    That will come from experiance of watching others perform and noting group reactions.
    Or may be reflected in other material transmited at the same time. Or it may be partly reflected in traditionaly held cultural attitudes.

    But when performing to specific groups the performer may choose to limit the range in order to inflect what is most relevant to the listner ignoring other aspects that may not be of interest.

    Perhaps the only time the performer may play with the full register is to a group of scribes or other interested experts. Who will themselves
    be familar with the full range and depth of the material and able to pick up any new varations or novelty in an individual performance.

    Working long term is restrictive given these conditions. Yet still worth while I feel.

17. I will adapt that slightly to take in my views on Lovejoy.

    If student A reads a book in which T is trying to demonstrate X, which is not a valid form of enquiry. It would be suggested that this form of “cultural transmission” is open to being rejected by student A once he reads it and grasps the full extent of the argument. If he has indeed been taught how to engage in critical thought or standard approaches to the subject, taught by teachers C. E. F. Z. R. W or G.

    http://jebmc.wordpress.com/2010/02/20/completly-lost-for-words/

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