A school of thought is a collection or group of people who share common characteristics of opinion or outlook of a philosophy, discipline, belief, social movement, cultural movement, or art movement.
Schools are often characterized by their currency, and thus classified into "new" and "old" schools. 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.
Famous quotes containing the words school and/or thought:
“We’ll set thee to school to an ant, to teach thee there’s no laboring i’ the winter.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A society made up of individuals who were all capable of original thought would probably be unendurable.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)