Princeton sociologist Robert Wuthnow has a 1989 book ("Communities of
Discourse: Ideology and Social Structure in the Reformation, the
Enlightenment, and European Socialism") that looks at these
intellectual innovations as products of outsider discursive
communities with access to new resources independent of existing
elites.  I think it is a fairly canonical source within the subfields
of sociology that study this sort of thing (cultural sociology,
organizational sociology, etc) and broadly consonant with the Randall
Collins book mentioned by Roy (The Sociology of Philosophies).

Adam Lutzker