Small Groups Spark Revolutions

Collison argues the Irish Enlightenment was a colocated network whose members—Swift, Berkeley, Petty, Hutcheson, Burke, Cantillon—collectively sketched core economics decades before Smith or the physiocrats. The idea is that 'small group theory' sits between great‑man and structural accounts: tight circles can catalyze whole fields. — If intellectual breakthroughs emerge from compact, colocated circles, funders and universities should nurture small, high‑trust clusters rather than only scaling large institutes.