1. A map of social theories, 1000-2000 by Alan Macfarlane

Filmed as part of a second year course in social anthropology at Cambridge University in November 2001. For further writings on the social theorists and the background, please see www.alanmacfarlane.com
Recommended related books published by Alan Macfarlane:
1. Montesquieu - www.amazon.co....
2. Adam Smith - www.amazon.co....
NB.
For the chart referred to here, please see:
fortnightlyrevi...
All revenue is donated to: www.oralliterat...

[@ayabaya]

Thanks for your kind remarks. I agree about the sound quality and maybe one day will find the energy/money to rectify this. All these films are done with basic equipment, with no funding or support from anyone, so they are very basic. Just a few are being re-done for China, where the sound is being improved, so things are moving... Alan

[@jackie6786]

Thank you!

[@herrnkniebolo1180]

Around 22:30 you failed to capitalise on a perfect opportunity to use 'vicissitude*'. *a change of circumstances or fortune, typically one that is unwelcome or unpleasant from Latin vicissim ‘by turns’, from vic- ‘turn, change’.

[@herrnkniebolo1180]

Anglo-Saxon scholarship is quite ruinous at any attempt by the other to derive some sort of truth because their view of everything is distorted after the end of the war. A small and melancholic fellow in the person of the greatest genius mankind will ever see -- Arthur Schopenhauer -- really is the one who should be getting all the credit for coming up with the basis of evolution, before Darwin! The genesis of the idea according to me can be found in Schopenhauer's many gradations of the Will, as is manifested or objectified in the multitude of life including all of nature, as part of the overall phenomena.

[@herrnkniebolo1180]

To answer the question put forth by you at the start of the lecture, as to what happened: well a lot of war took place before the peace of Westphalia around 1646. Before that the church and the state were inextricably tied to each other and to view one without the guiding and certainly NOT invisible papal hand would be simply inconceivable! To be honest all the later thinkers including Descartes and Voltaire much later on were seriously late to the party. The seeds of the Enlightenment were, and I suppose here is where you could possibly agree with me, were sown during the Italian renaissance, perhaps somewhat unwittingly by someone like Machiavelli, insofar as we can be concerned only with the progress of thought later on, without all the art and romanticist buffoonery.

[@SS-qk8oc]

I’m very thankful for these lectures. Great mix of conventional wisdom with many unique insights sprinkled throughout….

[@mithalashraf7684]

my left ear learned a good bit.

[@llshih]

Thanks for making the lectures available. Prof Macfarlane's lectures are excellent!

[@littleledup]

thank you very very much for uploading your videos Sir. Its a treasure you found through years of arduous research, dedication and thinking, and you have passed this torch of wisdom to us, we couldn't have asked for more. Thank you once again.

[@inneruniverse17]

Brilliant lecture! I've only just found your channel and I'm rather enjoying your lectures. Thank you for sharing your knowledge.

[@kantavon]

Thanks a million dear Ayabaya :)for sharing your ripe wisdom along with 'simple made' disciplinary knowledge.

[@jauatkales]

Thank you, it's perfect for preparing for an exam in the Formation of the Sociological Thought

[@weewilly2007]

Just a small quibble, as grateful as I am to these quality lectures made free to the public, I come away feeling that the professors pomp (which is quite a taxing thing in and of itself) is not in proportion to the insights he provides.

[@gayleannherron]

Although nothing in this was incorrect, this Prof has made a simple concept, such as defining Paradigm and Paradigm shifts in unnecessarily complicated ways with too vague of examples. However, having said that, I love hearing any prof or lecturer discuss paradigm shifts as I love hearing someone quote and explain Thomas Kuhn as he really enlightened (Kuhn) our fields of social sciences (although we still have our heads in the sand 99.9% of the time - especially clincians and practitioners.

[@richardmartin7213]

I wish I had gone to Cambridge Alan McFarlane is a great lecturer. He has thought me so much and made it simple no jargon. Love your lecture on Marx brilliant easy to understand got me a 67 in exam. In my collage students are allowed ask questions not a good idea. Its time wasting.

[@PiotrKoniecznyWikipedian]

Rare high quality from youtube - thank you!

[@MetaReaLizard]

Thank you for making your knowledge accessible to all.

[@Nazireh7]

Excellent, clear & unparalleled explanation & insight. Much thanks!

[@WalyB01]

A small correction, but I do believe the name "enlightenment" stems from the idea that the mind becomes enlightened by thought and especially reason and not as a contrast to the previous era, which were "dark".

[@barbarabell2011]

This professor and this lecture series has saved me from having to read about 46 pages of my Introductory to Sociology. I love studying sociological concepts but having to read them gets boring. I convert this to mp3 format and listen to it while I am going about my daily tasks and the information is stored. Thanks for your contribution to my education. Awesome!

[@RobSSBB]

@liopowers I 100% agree with you, I am studying sociology at undergrad level. I have noticed how interconnect all aspects of sociology are and that they must simultaneously be treated separately and as connected. We must search for the patterns that exist and see things which are interdependent of being a totality or objective or separate and subjective. Bourdieu got this right with field and habitus, in my view. The structure/agency debate is a very interesting one to me

[@insettostecco]

Many many thanks from a Birkbeck 1st year undergraduate student.

[@derdriui]

Thank you very much! Very kind of you. Very stimulating lectures.

[@liopowers]

The complexity of social/humal/physical interconnections are not to be categorized and seperate. They are to be studied as influencial flows efecting realizations and actions. We myst search for regularities at those interdepented values that cannot act seperately neither can be seen as one.

[@RahulKamble-gi8nv]

Thank you for uploading lecture on online.Lecture is a very excellent.

[@vijay-1]

Extremely useful

[@brokenrulerlabs]

Thanks for posting this.

[@I_-_____-___lat]

wonderful. thank you for all your informationliberationinternetpersuits

[@user-vb9sg7dc4t]

TO FIX ONE-SIDED AUDIO open start menu type mono enable mono :)

[@fernandocortes1187]

11:00 modern world 11:50 Theories

[@metal87power]

I don't understand why any science have to got paradigms to be science. Science should be logical, rational, realistic, and social science that is.

[@SuperSomebodylikeyou]

The sound is only in the left channel. If one duplicates the left channel and puts it into the right channel as well, then that would probably help a bunch. If I lived 4500 km closer, then I'd have volunteered to help out. Thank you for posting these videos because there seems to be a serious lack of videos on anthropology.

[@dalpaugh]

Extremely edifying. Thank you.

[@Yuengling88]

Yes, thank you dearly.

[@stephenconlon653]

You come across as a very kind man

[@buddyschreizerden3611]

Excellent lecturer! Scholars are a dying race unfortunately, being replaced by ignorant student-pandering ideologs. They would be well advised to try to emulate some of McFarlane's humble curiosity and poetic mode of thought.

[@commenthismofo]

Perhaps, but here in Europe, there are still many great scholars and many more to come.

[@ayabaya]

@UsmannicWorld Thanks. I might do this when I have a moment. In the meantime, have a look at my website (google Alan Macfarlane) - publications - theoretical methodology - last item (I can't paste a URL here I am afraid). Alan

[@barkhad100]

Wonderful lecturer we need people of his kind,but I don't think that posting requires fund as ayabaya what ever we thank people who post his lectures,thank you,thank you....

[@bettercallpaul2027]

There's actually two simple reasons this is happening: bad microphone placement, when he writes on the chalkboard his microphone is brushing up against the board causing that intense scratching sound. Also, rather than using a pre-amplifier to raise the volume the audio guy boosted the volume with a compressor, which causes the static waves / interruption in audio quality. There is also a buzzing sound which to me indicates the compression technique used here is to reduce the buzzing noise.

[@adamsmith275]

What is the book mentioned at 6:20? This guy knew that he was being taped... why wasn't he more careful in his speech? He makes a mess of Thomas Kuhn's ideas... At 38:00: Malinowski and functionalism... Pritchard... (among other undecipherable names!)

[@Roxidius]

I also had to google Piaget in phonetic for 15 minutes before my french speaking girlfriend guessed it correctly. wiki: nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Piaget

[@adamsmith275]

6:20 ...E.E. Evans-Pritchard... The Nuer (1940a, 1940b) This is an example of a good teacher: ...they do not help students in any way... and students have to find their way on their own...

[@amburgerzz]

240p.... we meet again

[@jimtayler555]

Brilliant presenter.

[@summaryadav8199]

LOL. these comments r 10yrs old. they should be metaphor by now. Amazing.

[@bvalcourt]

Not one eye drop about Frantz Fanon, Aime Cesaire. it's though the whole history of coloniolism and its demise didn't happen.

[@sattarabus]

Alan a brilliant presenter. But something is painfully wrong with the audio quality which renders some of his words and phrases either inaudible or unintelligible. Why is he so crisp and clear vocally when he is interviewing others? Most of videos featuring Alan as the central speaker are poor in audio quality. Which is a pity because he is so stimulating no one would like to miss a word from his mouth. Get a sound engineer to rectify the desideratum.

[@ispiseco]

excellent!!!

[@mattcat83]

I think Marx gave a similar criticism in his work "The Poverty of Philosophy."

[@etbadaboum]

Unfortunately, the link provided has some broken images (the temporal diagrams). Otherwise what an appetizing introduction.

[@ayabaya]

Thanks. It is Montesquieu. Alan

[@electricinsomnia2]

excellent

[@Princesspi]

Thank you for this video! I wish I could take your class. :D Camila

[@vannabear2624]

Sooo monotone

[@dantlan]

I appreciate the coherent thread. It's valuable and all too rare. It could be even better if the privileged perspectives of early social philosophers were mentioned. For example: 27:35 "The benefits of the new technologies (industrial revolution) were beginning to be found." For who?! Elites were also the philosophers at that time. Foucault is mentioned; why not discuss *standpoint* as it relates to theory? Some people (the public, America, etc.) benefited from the French Revolution after all.

[@TheMusicPowPowPower]

Interesting lectures, watched this and the one on Emile Durkheim so far, thanks Alan! Just wondering; who was the great theorist concerned with reaction and equality at 12:05? I coudn't understand what was said.

[@riverbedflower7498]

Shifts of the episteme... hmm... what are the good questions of this age?

[@globescape4771]

The chart link on your description takes you to an essay. The chart is not showing up on that web page.

[@toprob20]

Awesome vid. I just took a similar course at my own university. So very interesting. And why? for gods sake is there a sociological flamewar in the responses?? Just listen, everyone knows that a persons opion plays a large part with all lectures. I think ppl watching this can interpret this...

[@rashidkazmi91]

exclusive......... really...........

[@UsmannicWorld]

@OnderRoseExperience I second your opinion.We would be highly grateful man if you also try to put up a transcript too :)

[@mattcat83]

big words hurt me too bro :) a lot of those stock metaphors in contemporary philosophy have become mere conventions like short-hand. I'm just happy somebodies talking about these authors on youtube in a style of CHID a la Arthur O Lovejoy. btw as cool as your snarky comment was, nobody likes a kiss-ass :)

[@sattarabus]

May your tribe increase ! The age of institutionalised shrunken spans, and sound bites of shibboleths, needs the true blue, tireless, mentor of your vintage.

[@premenstruals]

somebody is just coughing to death

[@jamesm.3967]

Does the class have an illness? I’ve never heard so much coughing. 😕

[@csidorf]

Prof MacFarlane who are the thinkers you mentioned in at 38:06? Thank you very much, this has to do with me being a non-native speaker

[@evanhadkins5532]

Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Durkheim, Weber

[@7kGreen]

where can i get subtitles?

[@fuzzyfaisalgmail]

No sound?! Anybody else got that problem?

[@bajiri]

Is it on earphones? I experienced some problems, (there's sound on computer speaker), maybe you can try the left earphone? Idk, just saying.

[@lazyfreedom98]

sorry yale, i like comments not cons

[@Monkeynati]

@fuzzed I can hear it well... Specially the coughing person... so annoying!

[@smythefamily]

Kuhn needs to study more science. The reason Galileo and Einstein were remarkable is simply because they had a revelation which JOINED together things thought once upon a time to be quite separate. This integration also bore more fuit - a better understanding of how the world works in a more beautiful way from a grander viewpoint AND most importantly, when making predictions using this newly perceived pattern; it would be discovered to be honoured by nature herself - the ultimate arbiter.

[@williammeade8895]

... Kuhn did his b.s, m.s and ph.d at Harvard university in PHYSICS. He was then a fellow of physics for 3 years before switching to the history and philosophy of science. I don't think you could argue kuhn needs to study more science... have you read the book?

[@smythefamily]

William Meade I stand corrected on Kuhn's background - Thanks William. I cannot believe he then would speak so ignorantly and claim science is just a belief system. Nothing could be further from the truth. Science makes it's appeal to nature; the final decider; whereas philosophy - of which Kuhn's book is part of - is an introversion into humans discussing the validity of their ideas based entirely on their ideas. We need to convert philosophers to science; not the other way round - in my humble opinion. The EUREKA moment is; in fact; a realisation of a new truth - a truth of nature; contrary to Kuhn's BELIEF. Einstein's EUREKA moments explain atomic energy amongst other things. The atom and it's energy wasn't invented - it was discovered! - and explained! I guess that's why Kuhn has been forgotten whereas Galileo and Einstein are still part of our general awareness. "Politics is for the moment - An equation is forever" - A.Einstein. when declining the offered leadership role of the new Israel. Read Richard Feynman; a real pragamatist and scientist; a forward moving person who did not think in retrograde meanderings as Kuhn does (or did).

[@williammeade8895]

smythefamily Did Alan Mcfarlane say that Kuhn thought science was just a belief system? I don't remember now. But he would be wrong to say that that was Kuhn's opinion. If you read Kuhn's postscript to the book - where he responds to his critics - he says quite categorically that he does not think science is simply relative. His opinion on the matter is quite nuanced and I can't say that I totally understand it. Science has clearly been extremely successful over the centuries - much more successful by its own terms than perhaps any other field. But what Kuhn wants to say is that science is not simply an objective process and is subject, as all things are, to the limits of, and the ways in which, we see. Fashionable at the time was the idea of the gestalt switch - the picture of a rabbit that can also be seen as a duck (made fashionable by Wittgenstein). The idea is kantian I suppose; there is something out there, solid and objective, but we can all see that one thing in many different ways, and one way is not necessarily more right than any other. Kuhns proposition, i think, is that the different concepts and the different concerns of different ages cause men to look at things differently, have different questions of what it is they are seeing, and accept different kinds of answers. I would have to go into a great deal of detail to really give it any justice, I am not good enough to summarise such a difficult book. I can only really advise that you read it very carefully because its very enjoyable if you do and gives you an much more complicated and satisfying idea of science that doesn't buy into it being the march of untouchable progress, but neither does it reduce it to relativism.

[@mattcat83]

Is this a HP Lovecraft reference?

[@corserine]

Talk about stating the bleedin' obvious. These academics are so up themselves that they tie themselves in unnecessarily convoluted knots of intellectual introspection. If this is what passes for a second year lecture in what is often regarded as one of the best universities in the English speaking world then one might as well go to the University of East Anglia and have a reasonably easy time of it.

[@GreenHandMovies]

im supposed to listen to this for some homework but i almost cant the audio is actual shit and giving me a headache

[@GreenHandMovies]

it sounds like there is a digital pig slaughterhouse

[@marsCubed]

There is also a huge difference between Reason and theology not mentioned here, The split happened in pre Socratic times. There is only the trash of religion and the philosophy the natural world. comparing is stupid! this lecturer has a modern liberal (in the worst meaning of the word) fool. he is part of the problem and defeats us all with this wishy washy nonsense. science has always been fought for against the religious. ideologies have different social roots and are not equivalent.

[@lazyfreedom98]

this is cambridge this is the cartels this is weak

[@blancaroca8786]

Unbelievable quantity of bullshit here. Just dismissing science as a fashion . Can't listen past the first 5 minutes. This guy got no real idea of what science is or how it is just an application of logic to the real world no more and no less and is extremely close to absolute truth confirmed over and over again in many diverse ways. Get real folks.

[@Thecramps1982]

I can't even understand him, the voulme is non existent.

[@IVIaster21]

Roses are Red My name is Dave This comment is random Microwave

[@rtofield]

good you realise you have a boring lecture style.maybe try not speak in 5 minute sentances