7月 3, 2012
futurejournalismproject:

Graphing the History of Philosophy
Via Simon Raper:

To cut a long story very short I’ve extracted the information in the influenced by section for every philosopher on Wikipedia and used it to construct a network which I’ve then visualised using gephi.
It’s an easy process to repeat. It could be done for any area within Wikipedia where the information forms a network…
…Each philosopher is a node in the network and the lines between them (or edges in the terminology of graph theory) represents lines of influence. The node and text are sized according to the number of connections. The algorithm that visualises the graph also tends to put the better connected nodes in the centre of the diagram so we the most influential philosophers, in large text, clustered in the centre. It all seems about right with the major figures in the western philosophical tradition taking the centre stage. (I need to also add the direction of influence with a arrow head – something I’ve not got round to yet.) A shortcoming however is that this evaluation only takes into account direct lines of influence. Indirect influence via another person in the network does not enter into it. This probably explains why Descartes is smaller than you’d think.

Read through if you’re interested in how this was done. Raper links to resources for SPARQL, a language for querying the semantic Web, and various posts for extracting information from Wikipedia.
Image: detail from Graphing the History of Philosophy by Simon Raper. Drunks&Lampposts.

futurejournalismproject:

Graphing the History of Philosophy

Via Simon Raper:

To cut a long story very short I’ve extracted the information in the influenced by section for every philosopher on Wikipedia and used it to construct a network which I’ve then visualised using gephi.

It’s an easy process to repeat. It could be done for any area within Wikipedia where the information forms a network…

…Each philosopher is a node in the network and the lines between them (or edges in the terminology of graph theory) represents lines of influence. The node and text are sized according to the number of connections. The algorithm that visualises the graph also tends to put the better connected nodes in the centre of the diagram so we the most influential philosophers, in large text, clustered in the centre. It all seems about right with the major figures in the western philosophical tradition taking the centre stage. (I need to also add the direction of influence with a arrow head – something I’ve not got round to yet.) A shortcoming however is that this evaluation only takes into account direct lines of influence. Indirect influence via another person in the network does not enter into it. This probably explains why Descartes is smaller than you’d think.

Read through if you’re interested in how this was done. Raper links to resources for SPARQL, a language for querying the semantic Web, and various posts for extracting information from Wikipedia.

Image: detail from Graphing the History of Philosophy by Simon Raper. Drunks&Lampposts.

  1. onehundreddollarssituateandreceiveからリブログしました
  2. feminaeconomicafuturejournalismprojectからリブログして、コメントを追加しました:
    Full-size here
  3. fasadfrontsllcfuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  4. letmefrolicfuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  5. uscpublicdiplomacyfuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  6. appy23hsmtからリブログしました
  7. swsmhfuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  8. desigcletyphoongirlからリブログしました
  9. blerchinfuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  10. adhelwisemuhammadakhyarからリブログしました
  11. hsmtgtokioからリブログしました
  12. ligaturesignaturefuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  13. muhammadakhyarfuturejournalismprojectからリブログして、コメントを追加しました:
    terlihat siapa yang paling berpengaruh, hahaha dia yang membunuh tuhan.
  14. misantropofuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  15. typhoongirlgtokioからリブログしました
  16. jondhuskerdufuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  17. gtokiofuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  18. hipennuifuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  19. makemixtapesnotwarfuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  20. situateandreceivefuturejournalismprojectからリブログしました
  21. therealgeekmedeaevaからリブログして、コメントを追加しました:
    detail from Graphing the History of Philosophy by Simon Raper. Drunks&Lampposts.