Toby Huff

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 to 1979.

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)
• Max Weber and the Methodology of the Social Sciences (1 ed.). Transaction Publishers. 1984. ISBN   978-0878559459.
• Huff, Toby E. (2017). The Rise of Early Modern Science: Islam, China and the West (3rd ed.). Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1107571075.
• Max Weber and Islam. Transaction Publishers. 1999. ISBN   978-1560004004. Co-authored with Wolfgang Schluchter.
• Huff, Toby (2007). Abattouy, Mohammad (ed.). "Understanding the Place of Science in Islamic Civilization". In les Sciences dans les Sociétés Islamiques. abdul-AzizFondation du Roi: 101–120. doi:10.13140/2.1.4152.8322.
• An Age of Science and Revolutions, 1600-1800. Oxford University Press. 2005. ISBN   978-0195177244.
• Jarvie, Ian; Mitford, Karl; Miller, David, eds. (2006). "The Open Society, Metaphysical Beliefs, and Platonic Sources of Reason and Rationality". Karl Popper. A Centenary Assessment. 2: 19–44. ISBN   978-1848901919.
• “Some Historical Roots of the Ethos of Science,” Journal of Classical Sociology, 7/2 (2007)
• Intellectual Curiosity and the Scientific Revolution. A Global Perspective. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. 2010. ISBN   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.

References

1. "Scientific Revolution in Comparative Perspective: Europe, Islam and China | K-12 Resources | The Institute for the Study of Western Civilization | TTU". www.depts.ttu.edu. Retrieved 2023-07-09.
2. "Toby Huff's curriculum vitae" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2011-01-06. Retrieved 2010-10-21.
3. The Writer’s Directory, 2010; Who’s Who in American Education, 2007-2008
4. Economic Transitions. General Technologies and Long Term Economic Growth. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
5. The Long Road to the Industrial Revolution. The European Economy in a Global Perspective. Leyden: Brill, 2009.
6. Escaping Poverty. The Origins of Modern Economic Growth. Vienna: University of Vienna Press, 2013.
7. Merry E. Wiesner-Hanks, Clare Haru Crowston, Joe Perry, A History of Western Society., 13th ed. McMillan.
8. 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.

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.