Aesthetics as an Intellectual Network.

The author examines the field of aesthetics as a discipline, focusing on its lack of unification and its connectedness and dependency on other fields of inquiry in the form of an intellectual network. The topic of the atomization and internalism of academic aesthetics and the field of art history is discussed as well as its origins in the German philosopher Kant and the book "Art History Versus Aesthetics," edited by James Elkins. The author examines the collaborative networks that exist between philosophical aestheticians, art historians, cultural anthropologists, and social network theorists, and uses the term "small worlds" and the idea a self-organizing system to explore the shifting boundaries of aesthetics.