From PhilPapers forum Discussion of PhilPapers, Misc:

2010-09-15
Data Visualization for better understanding
Reply to David Bourget
David,

I wrote the original post in some haste and was apparently not very clear. The information that I am interested in, for this project, is the history of philosophy specifically the tracking of influences of ideas between philosophers and schools of thought over time.  

The first way I see the information taking shape is using the date function to create a timeline of all the articles divided out by subject and author.  This stage would only be of interest for instruction of students new to the field or to track out a trend in the publishing.  I see the next phase where the authors are classified by position on philosophical topic. In this way, we can watch the data move not only through subjects but also through movements in philosophy over time. Ultimately, I am interested in tracking the relationships between individual philosophers, through their published work, to create a web of relationships that can be used to examine influence and dependency in philosophy as a whole.
 
All of this information should be made available to the public and even the early incarnations can be used to teach history of philosophy, if nothing else.