Do all first links on Wikipedia lead to philosophy?
matpalm.com
matpalm.com
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2592522
But then I read the article... Very nice!
Then I noticed that this was only because of an edit someone had made earlier in the day...
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2587352
Seems the actual script is gone but there may be a new version in the comments.
EDIT: Tried it again... Stupid - Philosophy = 11
Deleted comment
But yeah I was thinking something like an excel read out of the words, and just a fun little engine that would let you test any word on the fly. Maybe even live stat tracking for popular words that updates daily, I just love the idea of these word relationships. But there is soo much room for deliberate tampering.
I tried on conservapedia and kept winding up at Earth or stuck in a loop.
I'd say, of the above, "mind", "thought", and "reason" are pretty basic -- you cannot have philosophy without a mind, for one (though you can probably have a mind without philosophy).
It's kind of like zooming in on what it means means to be alive in this universe. The fact that it ends at Philosophy is profound glimpse into what it means to be a thinking entity in the universe.
If we ever meet Aliens from another part of the galaxy, they would no doubt form similar knowledge structures that would probably end up being exactly like this. Their Wikipedias would end at Philosophy as well.
Community -> Living -> Life -> Physical body -> Physics -> Natural science -> Science -> Knowledge -> Fact -> Information -> Sequence -> Mathematics -> Quantity -> Property (philosophy) -> Modern philosophy -> Philosophy -> Reason -> Human Nature -> Thought ->... The fact that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panpsychism tends to be the last part of the chain before it repeats is just less interesting.
PS: I suspect that most articles can be reached by every other article so you can take just about anything and say it's the "root" article for the rest of Wikipedia.
Most articles can be reached by every other article, but not if you are only following the first link. You can make a case that anything on the chain that leads from Philosophy back to Philosophy is the root, but anything outside of that is going to be tough to argue, in my opinion.
I assume requiring the path from the first word was only to provide an easily replicable rule. Create a rule which chooses the fifth word (and where fewer than five links are provided, choose the last). Then compare the results to the OP's.
"The words and values we use to describe nature are all imprecise approximations, many are wildly wrong. We observe phenomena all around us, and if you try to describe what it is, and ask "why" enough times then you get down to the discussion of what frame of reference we use to observe the universe. We have a body of knowledge, and we tack on new observations onto that body, occasionally the body reforms and the philosophy changes. Every learner has a philosophy.
Philosophy is where the rubber meets the road in figuring out what our universe is. Is matter a particle or a wave or other, it depends on your existing perspective, your philosophy.
When Plato gave Socrates' definition of man as "featherless
bipeds" and was much praised for the definition, Diogenes
plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato's Academy, saying,
"Behold! I've brought you a man."
Cynics like Diogenes are just as dogmatic as anyone, but the truth they are dogmatic about is that there is no truth. It's still a conviction. Be cynical about cynicism and Diogenes looks just as dumb as Socrates, or anyone for that matter.
We all look dumb when we answer questions. This is why Socrates preferred to be the asker.
That's a bold assumption. I think its arrogant to assume that 'knowledge structures' take one form, which is the one in our heads. Ever seen/read Solaris?
I suspect there may be a few abstract concepts that this applies to.