After 20 years, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thrives on the web | Hacker News Reader

After 20 years, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy thrives on the web

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150 pointszt30 comments

It's sad how rare authoritative, free resources are on the web. It's cliche to say how incredible an opportunity the Internet presents to share the world's knowledge, but the most valuable knowledge, the serious scholarship, is effectively withheld from the public. Imagine how some debates would change if more authoritative resources were easily accessible (I don't want to exaggerate the value of 'authority', but it's a much better starting point than Wikipedia) and cited with a link, such as in HN discussions. Partly as a result the Internet is mostly rumor and popular notions, not knowledge.

I've even turned to SEP for mathematical concepts (to the extent it covers math), for example, because there is no free authoritative resource in that field.

> I've even turned to SEP for mathematical concepts (to the extent it covers math), for example, because there is no free authoritative resource in that field.

Does http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ not do the trick for what you were looking into?

I use MathWorld too but it's limited for my purposes, which includes conceptual understanding: Its articles tend toward strict definitions and not concepts, some terms I lookup are omitted, and unless you already are familiar with the term defined then it can be hard to comprehend.

Compare, for example:

* http://mathworld.wolfram.com/ModelTheory.html

* http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/model-theory/

EDIT: Replaced the examples with better ones

Scholarpedia is another good and authoritative source. The articles are typically written by the person who created the concept, or an active authority: http://www.scholarpedia.org

Indeed, one of the most authoritative sources. They should expand the fields treated, imo.

How does mathworld stack up against wikipedia for Math? I often wondered this.

Here's a review of Wikipedia's math articles by a mathematician:

http://wikipediocracy.com/2013/10/20/elementary-mathematics-...

If you don't already know what you are reading, you can't distinguish knowledge from nonsense.

I think a resource comparable to SEP for math is Princeton Companion to Mathematics. It would be indeed great if it were available on the web.

It is a really great guide. I had a failed plan to translate into Chinese years ago. Fortunately, the companion website has Google Search feature: http://press.princeton.edu/titles/8350.html

I love the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; even though I don't use it as much as I did while I was in school, it's still something I read on a semi-regular basis (especially when I need to look something up).

I'm personally a much bigger fan of curated/academic encyclopedias like SEP as opposed to open encyclopedias (Wikipedia, etc.) so it's good to see it thrive.

I agree but are there any other sites such as SEP which are clearly better than Wikipedia in their subject area? I think the level of curation and peer review of SEP is unique. Scholarpedia has the right idea but is not comprehensive.

I hadn't heard of this, so on a whim looked at one article at random - "Nordtvedt effect", then compared to the same on Wikipedia. Here's the first three lines of each:

Scholarpedia

In the years just prior to Einstein's publication of his Special Relativity theory Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz showed using Maxwell's equations for the electric fields within an object of distributed charge density that the fields would produce inertia in proportion to the object's electric potential energy content...

Wikipedia

In theoretical astrophysics, the Nordtvedt effect refers to the relative motion between the Earth and the Moon which would be observed if the gravitational self-energy of a body contributed differently to its gravitational mass and inertial mass. If observed, the Nordtvedt effect would violate the strong equivalence...

The complete Wikipedia article is much smaller than many, but while the Scholarpedia version is much more complete, it takes a long while to get anywhere.

Edit: expanded, changed format.

Looking at just those two fragments, I prefer the wikipedia style by a country mile. To me, the scholarpedia style is excessively wordy e.g. "in the years just prior to" and has a tortured sentence construction. Its the type of pretension that stings as you read it whereas I find the wiki style is straight-forward and easy to absorb.

I don't think it's helpful to pick a single article from either Wikipedia or Scholarpedia and judge the site on that. I do think that the SEP/Scholarpedia model of trusted experts has significant advantages over the Wikipedia model. With Wikipedia it is sometimes painfully obvious that the text is a compromise between different editors.

This is a fascinating example of the academic status quo being incentivized into creating valuable freely accessible knowledge.

I'm curious how being invited or accepted to write an article on topic affects academic prestige and tenure decisions. Is Brian Orend who wrote http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/war/ considered the canonical living expert on the philosophy of war?

I'd love to know more about the incentives and culture around this. I'm sure there are many insights one can draw about building valuable evolving repositories of knowledge from recognized exports.

I'd guess there have been attempts to do something like this in most fields, and this is one of the few that worked. Why?

One hint may be in http://plato.stanford.edu/info.html#policies

"Contributions to the Encyclopedia are normally solicited by invitation from a member of the Editorial Board. However, qualified potential contributors may send to the Principal Editor or an appropriate member of the Editorial Board a proposal to write on an Encyclopedia topic, along with a curriculum vitae." "By qualified, we mean those persons with accredited Ph.D.s in Philosophy (or a related discipline) who have published refereed works on the topic of the proposed entry..."

Also perhaps http://plato.stanford.edu/info.html#copyright . I don't know how much non-cs academics think about copyright and licensing, but as most accomplished academics are authors, I am guessing it may matter to them that they keep ownership.

"Copyright Notice. Authors contributing an entry or entries to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, except as provided herein, retain the copyright to their entry or entries. By contributing an entry or entries, authors grant to the Metaphysics Research Lab at Stanford University an exclusive license to publish their entry or entries..."

This is just one facet of course. I'm sure there are many other factors such as possibly the stature of the Stanford lab, and particular personal relationships and technical skill of those involved, good timing, etc. I'd be very curious to hear from those with personal knowledge of the details.

Don't know about Dr. Orend or the philosophy of war, but the authors are typically quite well regarded philosophers, if not necessarily the world expert on X (if people can even agree on that).

That said, I think writing an SEP article is a nice line item on a resume but not the sort of thing that makes your career. I think the authors typically write the articles after receiving some recognition.

There is no such thing as "the canonical living expert" in most philosophical fields, since the most important figures in any given field tend to disagree with one another very strongly. You could call them experts in their own positions, but they are hardly the ones that you could rely on to deliver a balanced introduction to the field as a whole.

Most SEP articles seem to have been written by younger professors (mostly in their 40s) whose daily job is to teach balanced, comprehensive, introductory courses on general topics. They might not be world-class experts in any single field, but they have broad knowledge and teaching experience. They might have edited anthologies or organized conferences on the topic. They know what points students are prone to miss. They know which theories are frequently misunderstood. This breadth, not depth, makes them ideal authors of encyclopedia articles.

My interpretation has always been that philosophy students and professors just really like to share and discuss ideas as an ends unto itself, with little regard for self-interest.

Kudos where kudos are due. I find the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy clear, concise, and readable even when dealing with the most complex and controversial of ideas.

What I find so amazing is that the SEP isn't for the faint of heart---it is rigorous and challenging to a fault, and rarely ever holds the reader's hand. Amazing it has had so much success, really.

I read a random introduction to an article every single day. I was a philo undergrad and use it to keep up to date with high-level philosophical concepts. It's great.

Wow! During my philosophy undergrad this was pretty much the only internet site from which we had readings.

Flat-out the most useful resource in my Philosophy undergraduate work. Any new concept I encountered would be investigated on this website.

Maybe now I will get a decent mark in Philosophy :P

this was the best resource for Philosophy 101!

A wonderful resource, but unfortunately it lacks an entry on feminism. I find this rather telling about the authors.

For what it's worth, it also lacks an entry on ice cream.

There are many, including:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-topics/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/feminism-liberal/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/femapproach-pragmatism/

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