Toby Huff Explained
Toby E. Huff (born April 24, 1942) is an American academic and emeritus professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth.[1] He was born in Portland, Maine.[2] He was trained as a sociologist but has research interests in the history, philosophy and sociology of science. He has published Weber-inspired studies of the Arab and Muslim world, as well as China, including field work in Malaysia.[3] He is best known for his book The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West. Now in a third edition, it has been translated into Arabic (twice), Chinese, Korean, and Turkish. His explanation of the cultural and scientific divergence between Arabic/Islamic and European science in the medieval period has been widely influential, especially among economic historians such as Richard Lipsey,[4] Jan Luiten van Zanden,[5] Peer Vries,[6] among others.
Huff’s sociological approach to the European development, its legal transformation, along with the rise of the universities and modern science has been incorporated in several mainstream history texts.[7]
Career and contributions
Huff earned a B.A. from Northeastern University and a Master's from Northwestern University. He completed a Ph.D. from The New School For Social Research in 1971, where he was mentored by Benjamin Nelson.[8] He completed a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley working with Robert Bellah, and was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey from 1978–79.
Huff has been a visiting scholar at the National University of Singapore, the University of Malaya, and the Max Weber College in Erfurt, Germany. He taught sociology for thirty-four years at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth before becoming chancellor professor emeritus in 2005. Since then he has been a research associate in the Department of Astronomy at Harvard University.[2]
Publications
- On the Roads to Modernity. Conscience, Science, and Civilizations, Selected writings of Benjamin Nelson (1981)
- Book: Max Weber and the Methodology of the Social Sciences . 1984 . 978-0878559459 . Transaction Publishers . 1 .
- Book: The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West . 2017 . 3rd . 978-1107571075 . Huff . Toby E. . Cambridge University Press .
- Book: Max Weber and Islam . 1999 . 978-1560004004 . Transaction Publishers . Co-authored with Wolfgang Schluchter.
- Understanding the Place of Science in Islamic Civilization . In les Sciences dans les Sociétés Islamiques . 2007 . Mohammad . Abattouy . 101–120 . 10.13140/2.1.4152.8322 . abdul-AzizFondation du Roi . Huff . Toby .
- Book: An Age of Science and Revolutions, 1600-1800 . 2005 . 978-0195177244 . Oxford University Press .
- The Open Society, Metaphysical Beliefs, and Platonic Sources of Reason and Rationality . Karl Popper. A Centenary Assessment . Ian . Jarvie . Karl . Mitford. David . Miller . 2 . 19–44 . 2006 . 978-1848901919 .
- “Some Historical Roots of the Ethos of Science,” Journal of Classical Sociology, 7/2 (2007)
- Book: Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution. A Global Perspective . Cambridge University Press . Cambridge, England . 2010 . 978-0-521-17052-9.
- Huff, Toby (2022). “Max Weber’s Comparative and Historical Sociology of Law: The Developmental Conditions of Law.” In The Routledge International Handbook on Max Weber, edited by Alan Sica. London: Routledge, pp. 339-352.
- Huff, Toby (2020). "Europe as a Civilization and the Hidden Structure of Modernity.” In European Integration. Historical Trajectories, Geopolitical Costs, edited by Johann P. Arnason (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press), pp. 14-33.
Further reading
- Crombie, Alistair C. "The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China, and the West. By TOBY E. HUFF. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. xiv, 409 pp. $54.95." The Journal of Asian Studies 53.4 (1994): 1213-1215.
Notes and References
- Web site: Scientific Revolution in Comparative Perspective: Europe, Islam and China K-12 Resources The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization TTU . 2023-07-09 . www.depts.ttu.edu.
- Web site: Toby Huff's curriculum vitae . dead . https://web.archive.org/web/20110106085417/http://www.umassd.edu/media/umassdartmouth/seppce/departmentofpublicpolicy/Huff-CV.pdf . 2011-01-06 . 2010-10-21.
- The Writer’s Directory, 2010; Who’s Who in American Education, 2007-2008
- Economic Transitions. General Technologies and Long Term Economic Growth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
- The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution. The European Economy in a Global Perspective. Leyden: Brill, 2009.
- Escaping Poverty. The Origins of Modern Economic Growth. Vienna: University of Vienna Press, 2013.
- Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Clare Haru Crowston, Joe Perry, A History of Western Society., 13th ed. McMillan.
- On the Roads to Modernity: Conscience, Science and Civilizations, Selected Writings by Benjamin Nelson, edited by Toby E. Huff, Totowa, New Jersey: Rowman and Littlefield, 1981.