On Disciplinary Princes and Princesses

The superior gods laugh--'David Hume' [Suppressed by Adam Smith]

Look who thinks he is nothing?--From an old joke.

1. Lewis, David (214)
2. Quine, W.V.O. (164)
3. Putnam, Hilary (131)
4. Davidson, Donald (120)
4. Rawls, John (120)
6. Kripke, Saul (117)
7. Williams, Bernard (104)
8. Nozick, Robert (96)
9. Nagel, Thomas (94)
9. Nussbaum, Martha C. (94)
11. Searle, John (93)
12. Chisholm, Roderick M. (92)
13. Armstrong, David M. (87)
14. Fodor, Jerry (86)
15. Dummett, Michael (84)
16. Dennett, Daniel (83)
16. Harman, Gilbert (83)
16. Jackson, Frank (83)
19. Strawson, P. F. (82)
20. van Fraassen, Bas C. (77)---From The 266 Most-Cited Contemporary Authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. [Compiled by The Schwitzgebel family; HT Newapps]*

In accompanying posts, Eric Schwitzgebel has already noted the analytical/anglo slant of the Encyclopedia and the dramatic exclusion of anybody not 'white male' from the the-Schwitzgebel-SEP-top-266-list. Anybody familiar with the patterns of intellectual, cultural, and personal exclusion in the profession is not surprised by this.  Even so, it is -- forgive the pun -- instructive to note that the list is also a testament to the successful emancipation of Jewish men in the Anglophone world. Many of the  most important educational institutions had policies/quotas restricting Jewish access through the 1950s. (I am too young to remember any of this, of course, but when I would visit my grandfather in Forest Hills (Queens) in the 70s, he would show me the grounds of the (once) famous Tennis stadium and tell me about the exclusion of Jews.) One finds echos of these days not just in the cherished anecdotes about Morgenbesser, but also, more subtly, in some of Nozick's self-fashionings (walking around Brooklyn with Plato). {For more on such themes, see Robert Paul Wolff's memoir.}

Much of my philosophical life is a struggle against my inner high-school-teacher-to-be, and so I resist getting too close to the-list-making philosophers (Aristotle, Kant, you know the type). Of course, I love lists and stared at the-266 longer than I should. I was pleasantly surprised that two (Nussbaum and Dennett) in the top-20 were my teachers once. I was pleased that my supervisor (Garber) made the list based not just on his strength as a scholar, but also for his youthful contributions to decision theory. I know that Leonard Linsky (who did not make the list) would have been proud of his Bernard.  I am startled that one of my graduate school peers, Jesse Prinz, is about to crack the 'top 200' (and he has time to watch movies).

Is there anything else to say about the Schwitzgebel-SEP-top-266-list other than my name-dropping?

All in all I was taught by four on the Schwitzgebel-SEP-top-266-list. That makes my personal Schwitzgebel-SEP-index clock in at 1.5%.+ So, just in virtue of my educational trajectory I have been exposed to at least some of the people behind some of the most influential professional ideas. For the list points to the scaffolding of professional philosophy. Nobody, of course, is expected to know the totality of what these names stand for, but I was amused that in inspecting the names only one was utterly unfamiliar--ironically, Sten Ebbesen is a historian, who works a train-ride distance from where I live!

 

There must be folk that have been taught by up to 25 (or more?). So, I speculate that when one's index moves above, say, 5% one is basically indoctrinated into conventional wisdom, while at around 10% one is basically one of the disciplinary princes or disciplinary princesses, often with accompanying syndromes familiar to royalty-watchers, or so says this disciplinary-page. Like all royal families, ours is not just a system of inbreeding; it's open to newcomers (through marriage, adoption, and the hard work of an upstart) and -- despite the presence of bullying enforcers -- it is fragile enough to be vulnerable to revolutions of various kinds. (Of course, life as a prince is not easy, too.)

Citation patterns are also a system of forgetting; that is, the list is not just a window into the short-hand representation of the concepts, moves, arguments, insights that 'we' collectively think worth attributing, they are as much -- to quote a fine phrase from the eminent philosophical scholar, Ursula Renz -- "the replication of our ignorance" (that is, the overlooked, the forgotten, effaced, the annoying, etc.). I was startled for example, by recognition of the fact that, say, Gewirth and Bedau (Hugo) are already joining the ranks of the fading shadows barely registering in the collective memory.

 

The patterns of exclusion are real (cf. Dennett 1991) and I suspect that one's Schwitzgebel-SEP-index-number is a way to measure one's distance to the inner core of the profession. (In a trailing fashion, of course.) And it's not just women that show up among the Borgesian library index cards of low Schwitzgebel-SEP-index-numbers. For example, in another context, I jokingly noted that Jody Azzouni's philosophy is a kind of standing alternative to the ruling family.** Yesterday, I was leaving through Metametaphysics, and I was struck by how the (scarce) references to his work also evoke phrases like "rather different" and "esoteric;" these are not compliments in our terminological universe. In fact, that's just a step away from becoming not being cited at all (a mega-thin posit), even though he's been a meta-ontologist for quite a while now (and pioneered a whole number of moves now popular). There is, of course, a lot to say how such phenomena are possible, but one key trick that Jody has, as of yet, not mastered is to become a favored interlocutor of one of the royals. I use the word 'trick' knowingly; only a few of us can grant such privilege.

 

*'Contemporary' means 'born 1900 or later.'

+'Taught by' means 'taken a class for credit or been supervised by' (so no colleagues). I'll leave it to others how one 'scores' audits.

**Disclosure: Jody -- undoubtedly a low Schwitzgebel-SEP-index-number -- taught me epistemology once, so if he were to become big, my index number would jump a bit (unless his inclusion would displace some of my other teachers).

Comments

[Matt]

I'm pretty sure I was the student of only one person on the list- Paul Guyer. Still, a very good person to have studied under.

Is there anything else to say about the Schwitzgebel-SEP-top-266-list

It seems to me that _most_ of the people at the top did important work in several areas- often very different areas, but in most cases, on lots of topics, at least. That's not surprising, of course, but surely is worth thinking about, when thinking about such lists.