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The history of ideas is a field of Research in History that deals with the expression, preservation, and change of human Idea s over time. The history of ideas is a sister-discipline to, or a particular approach within, Intellectual History . Work in the history of ideas may involve interdisciplinary research in the History Of Philosophy , the History Of Science , or the History Of Literature . In Sweden , the history of ideas has been a distinct university subject since the 1930s, when Johan Nordström , a scholar of literature, was appointed professor of the new discipline at Uppsala University . Today, several universities across the world provide courses in this field, usually as part of a graduate program. THE LOVEJOY APPROACH The historian Arthur O. Lovejoy (1873–1962) coined the phrase ''history of ideas'' and initiated its systematic study, in the early decades of the Twentieth Century . For decades Lovejoy presided over the regular meetings of the ''History of Ideas Club'' at Johns Hopkins University , where he worked as a professor of history from 1910 to 1939. Aside from his students and colleagues engaged in related projects (such as René Wellek and Leo Spitzer , with whom Lovejoy engaged in extended debates), scholars such as Isaiah Berlin , Michel Foucault , Christopher Hill , J. G. A. Pocock and others have continued to work in a spirit close to that with which Lovejoy pursued the history of ideas. The first chapter/lecture of Lovejoy's book '' The Great Chain Of Being '' lays out a general overview of what is intended (or at least what he intended) to be the program and scope of the study of the history of ideas. UNIT-IDEAS Lovejoy's history of ideas takes as its basic unit of analysis the unit-idea, or the individual concept. These unit-ideas work as the building-blocks of the history of ideas: though they are relatively unchanged in themselves over the course of time, unit-ideas recombine in new patterns and gain expression in new forms in different historical eras. As Lovejoy saw it, the historian of ideas had the task of identifying such unit-ideas and of describing their historical emergence and recession in new forms and combinations. REFERENCES
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