A school of thought (or intellectual tradition) is a collection or group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, economics, cultural movement, or art movement.
Schools are often characterized by their currency, and thus classified into "new" and "old" schools. There is a convention, in political and philosophical fields of thought, to have "modern" and "classical" schools of thought. An example is the modern and classical liberals. This dichotomy is often a component of paradigm shift. However, it is rarely the case that there are only two schools in any given field.
Schools are often named after their founders such as the "Rinzai school" of Zen named after Linji Yixuan and the Asharite school of early Muslim philosophy named after Abu l'Hasan al-Ashari. They are often also named after their places of origin, such as the Ionian School of philosophy that originated in Ionia and the Chicago school of architecture that originated in Chicago, Illinois and the Prague School of linguistics, named after a linguistic circle found in Prague, or Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School whose representatives lived in Tartu and Moscow.
See also
- List of philosophies
- Paradigm
- Mindset
- Worldview
- Commentary of a philosophical text
