I keep returning to my copy of The Sociology of Philosophies, by Randall Collins. Sometimes I discover new things in it. Sometimes I am just reminded of why I read it in the first place.Recently I have returned to the Introduction, which is basically concerned with tearing about some straw men--misconceptions that need to be put in their place before getting on to the heart of Collins' story. My favorite straw man is the first: Ideas Beget Ideas. Here is a quote from Collins that summarizes his attack:
Ideas are not think-like at all, except insofar as we represent them in symbols written on materials such as paper, but are first of all communication, which is to say interaction among bodily humans. To enter into the physical brain (or inside the computer) is precisely the wrong way to perceive ideas; for ideas are in the process of communication between one thinker and another, and we perceive the ideas of another brain only by having them communicated to us. It is the communicative mode. There is no thinking except as aftermath or preparation of communication. Thinkers do not antedate communication, and the communicative process creates the thinkers as nodes of the process.
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