This project takes a deeper look into the widely influential Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (SEP) and reveals three layers of the philosophy landscape it presents. The first layer is the content of entries, each offering an overview of a philosophical topic or thinker. Beneath this lies a layer of citations that manifest the dialogues among scholars within the community. From this, we start to see more clearly how social power is intertwined with the narrative of intellectual history—for example, whose voices count? The last one is the layer of meta-content assigned by the SEP’s authors and editors, such as links between related entries, which shapes the architecture of this “knowledge system”. At the end of this talk, I would also like to share some methodological reflections.

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Junyi Tao

A life-long learner and thinker.