The Entire Discipline of Philosophy Visualized with Mapping Software: See All of the Complex Networks

Dai­ly Nous, a web­site about phi­los­o­phy and the phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sion, recent­ly fea­tured a detailed map­ping of the entire dis­ci­pline of phi­los­o­phy, cre­at­ed by an enter­pris­ing French grad stu­dent, Valentin Lageard. Draw­ing on a tax­on­o­my pro­vid­ed by PhilPa­pers, Lageard used Net­workX (a Python soft­ware pack­age that lets you study the struc­ture and dynam­ics of com­plex net­works) to map out the major fields of phi­los­o­phy, and show how they relate to var­i­ous sub-fields and even sub-sub-fields. The image above shows the com­plete map, reveal­ing the aston­ish­ing size of phi­los­o­phy as an over­all field. The images below let you see what hap­pens when you zoom in and move down to dif­fer­ent lev­els.

To explore the map, head over to Dai­ly Nous–or open this image, click on it, wait for it to expand (it takes a sec­ond), and then start maneu­ver­ing through the net­works.

If you’re inter­est­ed in see­ing phi­los­o­phy dia­grammed from anoth­er point of view, check out this post in our archive: The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy, from 600 B.C.E. to 1935, Visu­al­ized in Two Mas­sive, 44-Foot High Dia­grams.

via Dai­ly Nous

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The His­to­ry of Phi­los­o­phy Visu­al­ized

Free Online Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es

Leo Strauss: 15 Polit­i­cal Phi­los­o­phy Cours­es Online