Andrew’s Year in Books

What did you read this year?

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2023

2,591

pages read

books read

Andrew Carr

The Revenge of the Real by Benjamin H. Bratton

Shortest Book

176

pages

The Sociology of Philosophies by Randall Collins

Longest Book

1,098

pages

Average book length in 2023

370

pages

Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

Most Shelved

1,864,627

people also shelved

We Need to Talk About Inflation by Stephen D. King

Least Shelved

757

people also shelved

Andrew’s average rating for 2023

3.7

Highest Rated on Goodreads

4.42 average

Andrew’s first review of the year

it was amazing

Extraordinary. Collins provides the clearest explanation I've encountered of what it is intellectuals do, how they work and why some succeed. For academics, the first 75 pages should be mandatory reading.

'Sociology of Philosophies' is a comparative study of intellectual networks of philosophers. It ranges from Ancient Greece, China and India, through the medieval period, and the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a lifetime of work.

Coll Extraordinary. Collins provides the clearest explanation I've encountered of what it is intellectuals do, how they work and why some succeed. For academics, the first 75 pages should be mandatory reading.

'Sociology of Philosophies' is a comparative study of intellectual networks of philosophers. It ranges from Ancient Greece, China and India, through the medieval period, and the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries. It is a lifetime of work.

Collins argues that the foundation of intellectual life is 'first of all conflict and disagreement'. All thought he believes is an 'aftermath or preparation of communication'. As such, by tracing who argued with who, we can see the development of ideas, and learn about why ideas change, what counts as creativity, and how networks and arguments evolve. There is useful, fascinating and well explained detail on what the content of those ideas are across these many epochs, but Collins focus is how the ideas-work was done.

Thanks to the multi-decade study behind this book, Collins comes to a few important conclusions about intellectual life. First, he argues there is rarely more than 3-6 centers of 'attention' which define the core of the intellectual world. There is limited capacity for attention, and so what defines the 'superstars' from the rest of us, is their timing and networks for locating their work within one of these centers of attention. Drawing on related studies, the eminent tend to be slightly more prolific and slightly better at identifying puzzles that draw others in (creating an incentive for a response), but this network hub position is essential.

In explaining the intellectual world in this way, Collins makes the best argument I've yet encountered for the role of the Literature Review. That most hated of PhD labours, and a tiresome challenge for many a scholar. Yet it is only by showing how our ideas connect to the core arguments that attention is likely to come our way. Creativity comes from the merging of ideas in new places, and thus it is a communicative act.

For this reason Collins also argues that there are almost no isolated geniuses. Instead he emphasises the role of face-to-face networks.First, he shows that superstar scholars typically have superstar supervisors. This may be because of location and selection (today the very best want to study at Harvard etc), but Collins suggests it is also because the eminent have the clearest insight into how the networks, arguments and puzzles are emerging and pass on these insights to their students.

Collins also makes the case for the academic lecture and workshop, face-to-face are the 'core activities from which the sacred object "truth" arises". Despite the introduction of the written word, and the mass distribution of books across recent centuries, he shows that the academic networks of ancient china or India resemble those of Western Europe in the early 20th centuries. Thinking is done together, not as one genius with a book and a pen. An insight I firmly agree with, and think could be much more usefully brought into contemporary academic analysis.

There is much much more to this book, not least the content of it, offering an engaging network analysis with many fresh insights into why names such as Socrates come down to us, while the more influential-in-their-own-time sophists are forgotten. Likewise, I learned much about the structure of Chinese and Indian philosophy, though at least a passing knowledge of each would benefit the reader.

I cannot claim to have read all the book. Much as I wanted to lose a month doing nothing else, I reluctantly had to give an 'academic read' to many of the empirical chapters. Still, I know I will return time and again to them. And the theoretical work, the broader insights into what intellectuals do, and why they act as they do, are compelling and can and should be read for their own sake.

There are some rare books which you read and suddenly the world makes a little more sense. As an academic, this is one of those books.
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ANDREW’S 2023 BOOKS

it was amazing

Andrew’s last review of the year

liked it

A good overview of an important topic. I'd have liked a little more theory to establish what inflation is. The author instead focuses on teasing out economic insights from 20th century political history (there's a few Roman references to justify the 2,000 years subtitle), and some general observations of the challenges diagnosing and responding to the 2021-2023 inflation squall (the book was finished in Jan 2023).

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