Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.

This is way outside of my usual wheelhouse, but I was sort of intrigued by this network graph of famous philosophers put together a few weeks ago by Simon Raper. (Via Sullivan.) As you’d expect, virtually all of the big circles are household names (or pretty close), and as the circles get smaller there’s a greater chance that I haven’t heard of the person. But what’s interesting is that this graph has a feature shared by a lot of assessments like this, namely that there are frequently one or two sharp exceptions: someone extremely influential who’s not only not a household name, but completely unknown to me. In this case, it’s Edmund Husserl. Never heard of him. And yet, if this graph is anything close to accurate, he’s as influential among philosophers as Heidegger, Spinoza, Schopenhauer, Hume, and Wittgenstein — and more influential than Leibniz, Descartes, Hobbes, Locke, and Mill.

This seems to happen a lot. In this case I’m curious about whether it’s for real. Is Husserl one of those guys who had immense influence within his profession but is largely unknown to the public at large? Did the algorithm that produces this chart make a mistake? Or was the guy who wrote his Wikipedia entry just an enthusiast who eagerly dropped Husserl’s name into lots of other entries, thus gaming the system? Educate me in comments.

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

BEFORE YOU CLICK AWAY!

Mother Jones was founded to do journalism differently. We stand for justice and democracy. We reject false equivalence. We go after stories others don’t. We’re a nonprofit newsroom, because the kind of truth-telling investigations we do doesn’t happen under corporate ownership.

And the essential ingredient that makes all this possible? Readers like you.

It’s reader support that enables Mother Jones to devote the time and resources to report the facts that are too difficult, expensive, or inconvenient for other news outlets to uncover. Please help with a donation today if you can—even a few bucks will make a real difference. A monthly gift would be incredible.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate