David and I have been revisiting the issue of who should be included in Phylo. Since our goal is to provide a resource tool for the entire field, it makes sense to define our criteria quite broadly. Our nearest cousin, The Mathematics Genealogy Project, takes a similar approach: “Throughout this project when we use the word “mathematics” or “mathematician” we mean that word in a very inclusive sense. Thus, all relevant data from statistics, or computer science or operations research is welcome.”
While we think this broad approach is merited, there are a few complications. First, philosophy seems to have more interdisciplinary connections than mathematics. Some issues in political theory, classics, literature, psychology, physics, and so on are arguably philosophical issues, so broad standards for Phylo would probably include a lot more people than broad standards for MGP. Also, given that we also plan to export Phylo’s capabilities for use in other disciplines, we’d like to maintain some kind of boundary over what counts as philosophy and what counts as other disciplines, otherwise we’ll have huge redundancies across these systems. These boundaries aren’t going to be hard-and-fast, but they should generally reflect the familiar people and publications specific to our individual fields. After thinking it over, we’ve come up with three individually sufficient criteria for inclusion in Phylo:
Philosophers included in Phylo have (a) received a doctoral degree in philosophy, (b) taught in a philosophy department, or (c) published an article in a philosophical journal or a book categorized under the Library of Congress subject heading ‘Philosophy’.
(a) and (b) generally capture who has studied and taught philosophy. Of course these may not apply to philosophers working before 1860, but including them in Phylo will require some changes to our database itself, in addition to these criteria.
For the moment, I’m more worried about how well this nets continental philosophers working departments (e.g., comparative literature) outside of mainstream philosophy departments. My hope is that these philosophers will still fall under (c), which is rather broad in its own right and includes headings for ‘existentialism’, ‘phenomenology’, ‘hermeneutics’, and ‘literary theory’. It may also help that figures like Foucault, Lacan, Deluze, and Zizek are all tagged with ‘philosophy’ in sources like Amazon, which should contribute some of our publication information. I’m not completely satisfied that this handles the issue, but any broader criteria we discussed seemed to include academics from too many other disciplines.
I’m curious what others think about these criteria. Is there anyone who is left out that clearly should be included? Are there other criteria that would be more accurate or representative? Thoughts and suggestions are always welcome.
