As intellectual historians, we tend to look at ideas from the supply side—that is, we tend to depict intellectual exchange as an activity driven by the producers of ideas. The pace and direction of intellectual change is determined by the conditions obtaining among those producers, and in order to reverse engineer their products, we have to pay very close attention to the materials and techniques those producers used. This approach is so common as to be almost invisible; its dominance only tugs at our awareness at moments when it is extended into a kind of teleological excess. This occurs when Read more