An interactive map of philosophers across history and cultures. 235 philosophers, each pinned at their birthplace on a de-sovereignized basemap — colour is intellectual tradition, size is cross-source consensus (k), and scrubbing the timeline reveals that year's historical polity borders.
We don't define "what a philosopher is" — we judge by a reproducible procedure: the union of several authoritative sources' own membership lists forms the pool; the more sources that list someone (the higher their k), the more central they are. If you disagree, argue with the procedure and the sources, not personal taste.
🔗 Live: philosopheratlas.chroniclecore.com · 📦 Repo: github.com/Zaious/PhilosopherAtlas
- De-sovereignized basemap — no modern national borders; only when you pick a year does that year's historical polity border appear (scrub through and watch empires rise and fall). Coordinates are neutral anchors — no "belongs to country X" is ever stored.
- Federal canon × k-value — SEP, IEP, Feng Youlan, Lao Sze-kwang, Routledge, and Wikidata each contribute their own membership list; the pool is their union. k = how many independent sources list a person; k ≥ 2 to appear on the map.
- Semantic clustering — overlapping pins cluster and colour by dominant tradition; hover to preview a name; click to spiderfy same-city clusters apart.
- Person cards — click a pin for a biography, "why included" (which sources list them), what polity the place belonged to that year, notable works, and a career-path trail across the map.
- Honesty guardrails — blank beats wrong (uncertain data is left empty, never guessed); the Anglophone source bias is shown openly in the legend; machine-derived data is labelled with its provenance and approximation level.
- Bilingual — full English/Traditional Chinese UI and biography toggle (top-right language button).
A figure must satisfy all of the following:
- Deceased for at least 20 years (death year ≤ current year − 20, rolling); the living are excluded.
- Enters the pool: tagged a philosopher on Wikidata (P106), or listed by any authoritative canon source.
- k ≥ 2: listed by at least two independent sources.
- Identity resolvable: maps to a unique Wikidata entity.
Full methodology, k-value derivation, and honesty guardrails are documented inside the app itself (nav → Method). Data schema: schema/philosopher.schema.json.
philosopher-atlas/
├─ index.html app.js style.css frontend (static, no build step; D3 v7 self-hosted, no runtime CDN)
├─ vendor/ d3, topojson (bundled)
├─ basemap/ Natural Earth coastlines/rivers/lakes + historical border snapshots
├─ data/
│ ├─ philosophers/{QID}.json one file per person (single source of truth)
│ └─ atlas_index.json lightweight index consumed by the frontend
├─ schema/philosopher.schema.json
└─ scripts/validate_philosophers.ps1 CI validator
Needs an HTTP server (fetch won't work over file://). Serve from the project root:
cd philosopher-atlas
python -m http.server 8000
# open http://localhost:8000/Deploys straight from the repo root — index.html loads data via ./data/ relative paths. Currently served at a custom domain (CNAME file in the repo root) via Cloudflare DNS.
Data is files; disputes are pull requests. Corrections and additions are welcome — there's one principle: argue about the procedure and the sources, not personal taste.
- Each philosopher = one JSON file (
data/philosophers/{QID}.json), validated against the schema. - To add someone, contest an inclusion, or supply a translated name / coordinate / polity / work → edit the JSON and open a pull request.
- Think someone is missing? Point to which authoritative source lists them.
- All Chinese text must be Traditional;
k,centrality, coordinates, and polities are program-derived — don't hand-edit them.
CI validates the schema, detects simplified characters, and checks that k/centrality are self-consistent (scripts/validate_philosophers.ps1).
(Planned: a form-based back end so people without Git can contribute too — see "Roadmap" in the app.)
Code (index.html/app.js/style.css/vendor/, scripts/): MIT — free to use and modify, but the copyright notice must be retained.
Data (data/): CC BY-SA 4.0 — because it incorporates CC BY-SA sources (Wikipedia biography extracts, historical border data), it is shared under the same terms with attribution required.
Per-source breakdown:
| Source | Used for | License |
|---|---|---|
| Wikidata | population pool, birth/death, coordinates, multilingual names, works (P800) | CC0 |
| Wikipedia (zh + en) | biography extracts (bio / bio_en) |
CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Natural Earth | coastlines, rivers, lakes | Public Domain |
| aourednik/historical-basemaps | era-synced historical polity borders (approximate, snapshot granularity) | CC BY-SA |
| SEP, IEP | canon membership lists (inclusion evidence) | cited |
| Feng Youlan's A Short History of Chinese Philosophy, Lao Sze-kwang's New History of Chinese Philosophy, the Routledge Philosophers series | canon membership lists (cited as evidence, not reproduced) | cited |
Historical borders and some polity sequences are machine-derived and snapshot-approximate, not authoritative rulings; contested modern-year borders are the dataset's own depiction.
Zaious — AI Agent Architect · Independent HCI Researcher
An independent researcher and AI agent architect bridging theoretical inquiry with hands-on system design. Currently watering a philosophy skill tree — on the road to becoming an AI philosopher.
繁體中文說明
古今中外哲學家的互動地圖。235 位哲學家標於一張去主權化的底圖上：顏色代表思想傳統、大小代表跨來源共識（k 值）；拉動時間軸，看該年在世者與當年的歷史政體邊界。
不定義「哲學家是什麼」，改用可複現的程序判定：讓多個權威來源的成員清單聯集生出母體，被越多來源收錄（k 值越高）越是核心。要爭，就對準程序與來源。
- 去主權化底圖：無現代國界；選定年份時才顯示那一年的歷史政體邊界。座標是中性錨點，不存「今屬國家」。
- 聯邦正典 × k 值：SEP、IEP、馮友蘭、勞思光、Routledge、Wikidata 各自的名單聯集；k = 被幾個來源收錄，k ≥ 2 才上圖。
- 語義聚合：重疊點群按主導傳統上色、hover 吐名；同城散開（spiderfy）。
- 人物卡：點釘針看生平、收錄依據、當年此地屬何政體、著作、生涯軌跡。
- 誠實護欄：留白勝過填錯；來源偏英語圈的偏誤明列於圖例；機器推導的資料標明出處與近似程度。
- 雙語：完整中英文介面與生平切換（右上角語言鈕）。
須全部滿足：已故且過世滿 20 年、進入母體（Wikidata 或任一權威正典）、k ≥ 2、身份可唯一解析到 Wikidata 實體。完整方法論見 app 內「方法論」分頁。
資料即檔案，異議即 PR。 每位哲學家 = 一個 JSON（data/philosophers/{QID}.json），通過 schema 驗證後開 PR 即可。所有中文一律繁體；k、centrality、座標、政體由程序推導，勿手改。
程式碼（index.html/app.js/style.css/vendor/、scripts/）：MIT，須保留著作權聲明。資料（data/）：CC BY-SA 4.0（因內含 CC BY-SA 來源）。逐來源授權詳見上方英文版表格。
Zaious — AI Agent 架構師 · 獨立 HCI 研究者
獨立研究者暨 AI Agent 架構師，在理論思辨與親手打造系統之間搭橋。目前正努力灌溉哲學技能點，走在通往「AI 哲學家」的路上。