Social movements generate theory rather than merely applying it

Evidence

The inner validity, coherence, and objective significance of all sciences, technologies, and arts are completely independent of the fact that they are realized within and find their preconditions in a social life, just as independent as their objective sense is of the psychological processes through which their discoverers found them. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 210 (#expands, via linked claim)

Simmel’s extraordinary originality may well be connected with his position as a relatively isolated thinker. He was, indeed, a “stranger” in the academy. The stylistic manifestations of a marginal position are striking in his written work. Neither in Simmel’s text nor in annotations does one find acknowledgment of scholarly predecessors or contemporaries. He speaks for himself, along with the immortal dead. What is more, Simmel deliberately shied away from recruiting disciples to carry on his kinds of inquiry. — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 10 (#corroborates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Social movements and historical conjunctures generate theoretical moments rather than merely consuming them — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 251; Theory is best engaged as struggle rather than fluent agreement; Philosophical inconsistency can generate richer intellectual movements than rigid logical consistency. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2085 (+13 more)

Related

• The truth of ideas is independent of their social origins (similarity 0.85)
• Intellectual originality can be a product of marginal social position (similarity 0.84)
• A thinker’s own thought must be separated from earlier material that only stimulated it (similarity 0.82)
• Ideological positions reproduce social positions in transfigured form. (similarity 0.82)
• Simmel advanced technical sociology mainly as a byproduct of metaphysical concerns (similarity 0.81)
• Enlightenment-based sociology fragments because theories depend on observers’ beliefs about human nature (similarity 0.81)
• Individual motives become social only through forms of mutual interaction (similarity 0.80)
• Truth of a theory is independent of either its productivity or its non-application (similarity 0.79)
• Thinking is a sociable collective activity that transforms thinker and interlocutors (similarity 0.79)
• Creating new intellectual strata from unprepared groups faces unprecedented difficulty (similarity 0.79)
• Movements transformed ideologies from justification into organizational principles (similarity 0.78)
• Humanity’s viewpoint and society’s viewpoint remain in principle distinct (similarity 0.78)
• Human sociality is one possibility among several, not the only lens on experience (similarity 0.78)
• Peripheral radical thought emerged from the oppressed’s own cultural epistemologies. (similarity 0.78)
• Revolution produces revolutionary consciousness, not the reverse (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• The truth of ideas is independent of their social origins #expands (0.85) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 210
• Intellectual originality can be a product of marginal social position #corroborates (0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 10
• Theory is best engaged as struggle rather than fluent agreement #corroborates (0.70)
• Philosophical inconsistency can generate richer intellectual movements than rigid logical consistency. #expands (0.60) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2085
• Revolution produces revolutionary consciousness, not the reverse #exemplifies (0.60) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1126