
Graphing the history of philosophy - ZeljkoS
http://www.coppelia.io/2012/06/graphing-the-history-of-philosophy/
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joe_the_user
I think this shows the perils of relying on wikipedia for "serious" studies.

Consider Wolfi Landstreicher. I happen to know his following comes from his
regular self-publication of a photocopied individualist-anarchist zine. Wolfi
is a great guy and I like to have drink with him every time he hitch hikes
into town from the Southern Oregon town where he lives on SSI. However, I
think professors of philosophy would be aghast that he gets as many edges on
the graph as many "serious" philosophers. Shows how much they know. I will
certainly tell him of his coup the next time I see him.

A scan of the graph shows the whole as what-you'd-expect. It's a mix of
"serious" professional opinion and the idiosyncratic opinions of amateurs and
gadflies. The influence of a philosopher shouldn't be just a matter of how
"sexy" they might be, I assume there's a matter of how serious work they've
done - being amateur gadfly myself, I'm only guessing here of course.

It's especially instructive that the complicated graph-analysis tools that are
brought to bear here seem to fail entirely at avoiding the best "garbage-in,
garbage-out" principle.

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winestock
The graph shows Thomas Aquinas as more influential than Duns Scotus. As much
as I admire Aquinas, I dispute that.

When I was in seminary, one of the guest lecturers told us of how he was in
Rome, doing his dissertation, and he needed to consult a work by Scotus. He
went to one of the Vatican libraries and requested the relevant book. He
struck up a conversation with the librarian, saying "You must not have a lot
of copies of Scotus' work." The librarian disagreed, saying "Oh no. We have
more manuscripts of Duns Scotus than we do of St. Thomas."

Except for a brief period during the Council of Trent, the works of St. Thomas
Aquinas were almost forgotten from the time shortly after his death until Pope
Leo XIII revived his reputation. Graphs like this do not reflect the change in
influence over time.

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joe_the_user
The chart shows Anarchist Crack-pot John Zerzan as significantly influential.
I'm sure he is in some circles but clearly the data is unselective in many
ways. I mean, I don't think Zerzan is that influential even among anarchists.

I'm doubtful of the size of Leo Strauss' bubble also.

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muchoburno1200
You're kidding me that Confucius has degree 5 way over on far left.... There's
far more connections between East and West thought than this reveals.

This is very much a biased history, from what seems like a single
interpretation's perspective.

So -- it's propaganda.

