Time for my five-year update of the most-cited authors in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy! (Past analyses: 2010, 2014, 2019.)
Method
* Only authors born 1900 or later are included.
* Each author is only counted once per headline entry (subentries are excluded). In 2010, I found that this generated more plausible results than counting authors multiple times per entry.
* As in 2019, but unlike 2014 and 2010, I include co-authors. Due to the unsystematic formatting of SEP references, this was a somewhat noisy process. To capture last authors, I searched for "and" or "&" in each bibliographic line, if appearing before a "19", "20", "forthcoming", or "in press", then pulled the text immediately after. To capture second authors that were not last authors, I searched for a second comma before such a date-preceding "and" or "&", then pulled the text after that. I omitted co-authors in position three or higher unless they were last author. Fortunately for the analysis, co-authorship is relatively uncommon in philosophy compared to the sciences, constituting by my estimate less than 10% of the bibliographic lines.
* Also as in 2019 but unlike 2014, I included editors, but only if their name appears before the date in the bibliographical line. Putting the editor at the front of the bibliographical line highlights the editor's role or the edited collection as a whole.
* After computerized search and sort, I hand-coded the data, in some cases correcting misspellings and merging authors (e.g., Ruth Barcan = Ruth Marcus), more often separating authors with similar names (e.g., various A. Goldmans and J. Cohens), in a process that involved some guesswork and pattern recognition. Inconsistent syntax and imperfect redundancy removal procedures also created some error, though nothing large or systematic that I noticed. Bear in mind that with about 208,000 bibliographic entries, perfection is not possible! I estimate coding error of up to about +/- 2 entries.
* To find the equivalent score of an author not included on this list, you can search the SEP site and count the number of hits, subtracting appearances in subentries and appearances other than first, second, or last headline editor or author in a bibliographic line (near the beginning of the entry, before the date). I also welcome thoughtful corrections that apply this method.
This list generates a rough measure of current influence in what I call "mainstream Anglophone philosophy" (a sociological category I have defined and discussed, e.g., here and here). For example, the top five -- Lewis, Quine, Putnam, Rawls, and Kripke -- are the same (in a different order) as the top five in Brian Leiter's poll results concerning the best Anglophone philosophers since 1957. Better-known bibliographic metrics, like Google Scholar and Web of Science do not as accurately measure this particular sociological phenomenon. See my 2021 discussion of ranking philosophy rankings.
The list captures, if anything, a moment in one particular academic philosophical culture. For example, despite Michel Foucault's huge global academic influence, mainstream Anglophone philosophers rarely cite him, and on this list he ranks #187.
Further caveats:
* Philosophers who work on topics that are underrepresented in the Stanford Encyclopedia relative to their visibility in mainstream Anglophone philosophy will appear lower on the list than their eminence would suggest.
* Authors who have a transformative impact in one area will probably be underrepresented or underranked relative to authors who make significant but less transformative contributions to several topics.
* Editors of the Stanford Encyclopedia might be somewhat overrepresented, since they might tend to disproportionately solicit entries on topics to which they have contributed and authors might feel some pressure to cite them in their entries.
* Given a large bias toward citing recent work, philosophers whose main contributions were before 1960 are probably substantially underrated on this list relative to their influence in mainstream Anglophone philosophy.
* Yes, I'm on this list (in a tie for #232). I find this somewhat embarrassing, since I think this method substantially overrates me (see the 2nd and 4th caveats). If you could withhold congratulations and comparisons, I'd appreciate it!
As I did in 2019, I will follow up later with some demographic analyses. Thanks to UCR comp lit and philosophy student Jordan Jackson for his help with the computer code.
[Updated Aug. 9, to remove two authors born before 1900 and to correct one misspelling.]
1. Lewis, David K. (cited in 307 different main entries)
2. Quine, Willard van Orman (213)
3. Putnam, Hilary (190)
4. Rawls, John (168)
5. Kripke, Saul A. (159)
6. Williamson, Timothy (152)
7. Davidson, Donald (151)
8. Williams, Bernard (146)
9. Nussbaum, Martha C. (140)
10. Nagel, Thomas (137)
11. Nozick, Robert (135)
12. Jackson, Frank (130)
13. Searle, John R. (120)
14. Chalmers, David J. (117)
14. Van Fraassen, Bas C. (117)
16. Harman, Gilbert H. (116)
16. Strawson, Peter F. (116)
18. Fodor, Jerry A. (115)
19. Fine, Kit (112)
19. Parfit, Derek (112)
19. Stalnaker, Robert C. (112)
22. Dennett, Daniel C. (110)
22. Dummett, Michael A. E. (110)
24. Kitcher, Philip (109)
24. Pettit, Philip (109)
26. Armstrong, David M. (106)
26. Chisholm, Roderick M. (106)
28. Van Inwagen, Peter (102)
29. Dworkin, Ronald (101)
29. Scanlon, Thomas M. (101)
29. Sober, Elliott (101)
32. Hawthorne, John (97)
33. McDowell, John H. (96)
34. Popper, Karl R. (94)
35. Goodman, Nelson (90)
35. Hacking, Ian (90)
37. Raz, Joseph (89)
38. Geach, Peter T. (88)
38. Goldman, Alvin I. (88)
40. Anderson, Elizabeth S. (83)
40. Bennett, Jonathan (83)
42. Hintikka, Jaakko (82)
43. Adams, Robert Merrihew (81)
43. Plantinga, Alvin C. (81)
45. Anscombe, G. E. M. (80)
45. Korsgaard, Christine M. (80)
45. Mackie, John L. (80)
45. Schaffer, Jonathan (80)
45. Tarski, Alfred (80)
45. Wright, Crispin (80)
51. Priest, Graham (79)
52. Dretske, Fred I. (78)
53. Alston, William P. (77)
53. Burge, Tyler (77)
55. Ayer, Alfred J. (76)
55. Gibbard, Allan (76)
55. Gödel, Kurt (76)
58. Horgan, Terence E. (75)
59. Kim, Jaegwon (73)
59. Stich, Stephen P. (73)
61. Kaplan, David (72)
61. Thomson, Judith Jarvis (72)
63. Field, Hartry H. (71)
63. Kuhn, Thomas S. (71)
63. Lycan, William G. (71)
63. Rescher, Nicholas (71)
63. Sellars, Wilfrid (71)
63. Singer, Peter (71)
69. Blackburn, Simon (70)
69. Evans, Gareth (70)
69. Hempel, Carl G. (70)
69. Zalta, Edward N. (70)
73. Frankfurt, Harry G. (69)
73. Ramsey, Frank P. (69)
73. Rosen, Gideon (69)
73. Sosa, Ernest (69)
73. Woodward, James (69)
78. Earman, John (68)
78. Perry, John (68)
78. Sider, Theodore (68)
78. Smith, Michael (68)
78. Waldron, Jeremy (68)
83. Feinberg, Joel (67)
83. Sen, Amartya K. (67)
83. Swinburne, Richard G. (67)
83. Wiggins, David (67)
87. Barnes, Jonathan (66)
87. Lowe, E. J. (66)
87. Skyrms, Brian (66)
87. Velleman, J. David (66)
91. Annas, Julia (65)
91. MacIntyre, Alasdair (65)
91. Shoemaker, Sydney S. (65)
94. Darwall, Stephen L. (64)
94. Grice, H. Paul (64)
94. Ryle, Gilbert (64)
94. Shapiro, Stewart (64)
98. Nichols, Shaun (63)
98. Prior, Arthur N. (63)
98. Soames, Scott (63)
98. Taylor, Charles (63)
98. Yablo, Stephen (63)
103. Church, Alonzo (62)
103. Habermas, Jürgen (62)
103. Young, Iris Marion (62)
106. Block, Ned (61)
106. Jeffrey, Richard C. (61)
108. Friedman, Michael (60)
108. Hare, Richard M. (60)
108. Peacocke, Christopher (60)
111. Brink, David O. (59)
111. Burgess, John P. (59)
111. Cartwright, Nancy (59)
111. Sorabji, Richard (59)
115. Austin, J. L. (57)
115. Smart, J. J. C. (57)
115. van Benthem, Johan F. (57)
118. Arneson, Richard J. (56)
118. Foot, Philippa (56)
118. Kenny, Anthony (56)
118. Miller, David (56)
118. Papineau, David (56)
123. Dupré, John (55)
123. Irwin, Terence H. (55)
123. Simons, Peter M. (55)
126. Audi, Robert (54)
126. Dancy, Jonathan (54)
126. McGinn, Colin (54)
129. Churchland, Paul M. (53)
129. Devitt, Michael (53)
129. Godfrey-Smith, Peter (53)
129. Hart, H. L. A. (53)
129. Parsons, Terence (53)
134. Belnap, Nuel D. (52)
134. Carruthers, Peter (52)
134. Chomsky, Noam (52)
134. Tye, Michael (52)
138. Buchanan, Allen E. (51)
138. Clark, Andy (51)
138. Glymour, Clark (51)
138. Rorty, Richard (51)
138. Sedley, David N. (51)
138. Stanley, Jason (51)
138. Wolterstorff, Nicholas (51)
145. Griffiths, Paul E. (50)
145. LePore, Ernest (50)
145. Montague, Richard (50)
145. Schofield, Malcolm (50)
145. von Neumann, John (50)
150. Barwise, Jon (49)
150. Brandom, Robert B. (49)
150. Haslanger, Sally (49)
150. Johnston, Mark (49)
150. Railton, Peter (49)
150. Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter (49)
156. Appiah, Kwame Anthony (48)
156. Boolos, George (48)
156. Enoch, David (48)
156. Millikan, Ruth Garrett (48)
156. Prinz, Jesse J. (48)
156. Salmon, Wesley C. (48)
156. Sartre, Jean-Paul (48)
156. Strawson, Galen (48)
156. Stump, Eleonore (48)
165. Cooper, John M. (47)
165. Horwich, Paul (47)
165. Kretzmann, Norman (47)
165. Longino, Helen E. (47)
165. Mancosu, Paolo (47)
165. Sterelny, Kim (47)
165. Weatherson, Brian (47)
165. Wood, Allen W. (47)
173. Feferman, Solomon (46)
173. Hale, Bob (46)
173. Kahneman, Daniel (46)
173. Levy, Neil (46)
173. Norton, John D. (46)
173. Sandel, Michael J. (46)
173. Suppes, Patrick (46)
180. Guyer, Paul (45)
180. Maudlin, Tim (45)
180. Mellor, D. Hugh (45)
180. Okin, Susan Moller (45)
180. Read, Stephen L. (45)
180. Salmón, Nathan U. (45)
180. Van Cleve, James (45)
187. Beiser, Frederick C. (44)
187. Burnyeat, Myles F. (44)
187. Cohen, Gerald A. (44)
187. Foucault, Michel (44)
187. Hurka, Thomas (44)
187. McLaughlin, Brian P. (44)
187. Mele, Alfred R. (44)
187. O'Neill, Onora (44)
187. Unger, Peter (44)
196. Broome, John (43)
196. Davies, Martin (43)
196. Elster, Jon (43)
196. Hull, David L. (43)
196. Lehrer, Keith (43)
196. Scheffler, Samuel (43)
196. Walzer, Michael (43)
203. Boghossian, Paul A. (42)
203. Craver, Carl F. (42)
203. Finnis, John (42)
203. Gauthier, David P. (42)
203. Goodin, Robert E. (42)
203. Kriegel, Uriah (42)
203. Laudan, Larry (42)
203. List, Christian (42)
203. Loewer, Barry (42)
203. Nolan, Daniel (42)
203. Slote, Michael A. (42)
203. Sunstein, Cass R. (42)
203. Thomasson, Amie L. (42)
203. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus (42)
217. Byrne, Alex (41)
217. Fricker, Miranda (41)
217. Kymlicka, Will (41)
217. Long, A. A. (41)
217. Schiffer, Stephen (41)
217. Smith, Barry (at Buffalo) (41)
223. Bach, Kent (40)
223. Barry, Brian (40)
223. Butler, Judith (40)
223. Garber, Daniel (40)
223. Heil, John (40)
223. Huemer, Michael (40)
223. Machery, Edouard (40)
223. Merricks, Trenton (40)
223. Restall, Greg (40)
232. Bealer, George (39)
232. Bechtel, William (39)
232. Colyvan, Mark (39)
232. Crisp, Roger (39)
232. Feldman, Fred (39)
232. Gabbay, Dov M. (39)
232. Gärdenfors, Peter (39)
232. Hampton, Jean (39)
232. McMahan, Jeff (39)
232. Nagel, Ernest (39)
232. Schwitzgebel, Eric (39)
232. Wolf, Susan (39)
244. Bird, Alexander (38)
244. Bueno, Otávio (38)
244. Crane, Tim (38)
244. Gendler, Tamar Szabó (38)
244. Hájek, Alan (38)
244. Ladyman, James (38)
244. Pasnau, Robert (38)
251. Feldman, Richard (37)
251. Halpern, Joseph Y. (37)
251. Kagan, Shelly (37)
251. Lange, Marc (37)
251. Pearl, Judea (37)
251. Pollock, John L. (37)
251. Rosenberg, Alex (37)
251. Schroeder, Mark (37)
251. Wedgwood, Ralph (37)
260. Alcoff, Linda Martín (36)
260. Baker, Lynne Rudder (36)
260. Bonjour, Laurence (36)
260. Brandt, Richard B. (36)
260. Conee, Earl (36)
260. Feyerabend, Paul K. (36)
260. Lewontin, Richard C. (36)
260. Linsky, Bernard (36)
260. Lloyd, Elisabeth A. (36)
260. Marcus, Ruth Barcan (36)
260. Sperber, Dan (36)
260. Teller, Paul (36)
272. Adamson, Peter (35)
272. Beall, J. C. (35)
272. Boyd, Richard (35)
272. Bratman, Michael E. (35)
272. Callender, Craig (35)
272. Cresswell, Max J. (35)
272. Hitchcock, Christopher R. (35)
272. Hurley, Susan L. (35)
272. Kittay, Eva Feder (35)
272. Matthen, Mohan (35)
272. Okasha, Samir (35)
272. Parsons, Charles (35)
272. Sainsbury, R. Mark (35)
272. Scott, Dana S. (35)
272. Sorensen, Roy A. (35)
287. Benacerraf, Paul (34)
287. Benhabib, Seyla (34)
287. Brogaard, Berit (34)
287. Cohen, Joshua (34)
287. Currie, Greg (34)
287. Darden, Lindley (34)
287. Flanagan, Owen (34)
287. Kahn, Charles H. (34)
287. Kamm, Frances M. (34)
287. Kleene, Stephen C. (34)
287. Mulligan, Kevin (34)
287. Paul, Laurie A. (34)
287. Pereboom, Derk (34)
287. Pogge, Thomas W. (34)
287. Recanati, François (34)
287. Shafer-Landau, Russ (34)
287. Thagard, Paul (34)
287. Watson, Gary (34)
305. Baier, Annette C. (33)
305. Barnes, Elizabeth (33)
305. Black, Max (33)
305. Gallagher, Shaun (33)
305. Giere, Ronald N. (33)
305. Gould, Stephen Jay (33)
305. Griffin, James (33)
305. Kneale, William (33)
305. Price, Huw (33)
305. Pritchard, Duncan (33)
305. Thomason, Richmond H. (33)
305. Turing, Alan M. (33)
305. Tversky, Amos (33)
305. Wimsatt, William C. (33)
319. Adams, Marilyn McCord (32)
319. Beebee, Helen C. (32)
319. Bennett, Karen (32)
319. Craig, William Lane (32)
319. Ebbesen, Sten (32)
319. Frede, Michael (32)
319. Hatfield, Gary (32)
319. Kreisel, Georg (32)
319. Langton, Rae (32)
319. Levinson, Jerrold (32)
319. Machamer, Peter (32)
319. Pateman, Carole (32)
319. Penrose, Roger (32)
319. Rey, Georges (32)
319. Varzi, Achille C. (32)
319. Zimmerman, Dean W. (32)
335. Allison, Henry E. (31)
335. Ashworth, E. Jennifer (31)
335. Berlin, Isaiah (31)
335. Cappelen, Herman (31)
335. Copp, David (31)
335. Daniels, Norman (31)
335. Hartmann, Stephan (31)
335. Hellman, Geoffrey Paul (31)
335. Hooker, Brad (31)
335. Kornblith, Hilary (31)
335. Kvanvig, Jonathan L. (31)
335. Leitgeb, Hannes (31)
335. MacFarlane, John (31)
335. MacKinnon, Catharine A. (31)
335. McDaniel, Kris (31)
335. Mills, Charles W. (31)
335. Oppy, Graham (31)
335. Rea, Michael (31)
335. Sarkar, Sahotra (31)
335. Savulescu, Julian (31)
335. Sylvan, Richard (31)
335. Vlastos, Gregory (31)
357. Bayne, Tim (30)
357. Butterfield, Jeremy (30)
357. Cameron, Ross P. (30)
357. Dawkins, Richard (30)
357. Egan, Andy (30)
357. Fischer, John Martin (30)
357. Gaus, Gerald F. (30)
357. Hill, Thomas E., Jr. (30)
357. Hodges, Wilfrid (30)
357. Hornsby, Jennifer (30)
357. Howson, Colin (30)
357. Joyce, Richard (30)
357. Kneale, Martha (30)
357. Levi, Isaac (30)
357. Maynard Smith, John (30)
357. Nadler, Steven (30)
357. Scruton, Roger (30)
357. Siegel, Susanna (30)
357. Von Wright, Georg Henrik (30)
357. Weisberg, Michael (30)
28 comments:
If it's not too much extra work, can you extract a list (with the same numbering as in the original list) of just the women?
Yes -- soon!
Gilles Deleuze is missing
Haraway? Adorno? The list is interesting; thanks for doing this. How did you decide who to include/exclude? Thanks!
Derrida, Gadamer, Lakatos
I was surprised at how far down the list one finds Wilfrid Sellars (tied for #63), Rorty (#138), and Bob Brandom (#150)
I see, in what is in front of me today, I have lessened my viewing-moral-english from 5 years-ago-here-this-topic, to viewing purposeful english here now...
...here's to listing viewings of purposeful anglophone entities...
26 women, 4 in the top 100. Let's do better! Particularly since this is the place where many of our students start their work. To send them to SEP without teaching them to do an actual lit review and reproducing problematic citation practices is hurting our discipline.
Nice work but it would be improved by running it through PageRank or a similar algorithm that computes a more sophisticated version of centrality/importance.
The rank for J.L. Austin is plausible (maybe even a bit lower than I would have expected) but I wonder if you're certain that you've not inlcuded the 19th C. legal theorist/utilitarian John Austin in his count, too? I ask only because this mix-up happens a fair amount. My favorite example is in the Blackwell Companion to Philosophy of Law and Legal Theory, where the index entry for "Austin, J.L." includes the mentions of both J.L. Austin and the legal theoriest John Austin. Some other books mess this up in the index, too, so it's easy to do. I know John Austin is cited in many of the jurisprudence entries, so am curious if you were able to keep him out of J.L. Austin's count.
Thanks for the comments, folks!
First pass analysis (without checks or corrections): Deleuze 15, Gadamer 24, Derrida 27, Lakatos 25, Haraway 24, Adorno 24
Sellars, Rorty, and Brandom are super influential in some circles but more or less ignored in other circles.
Sure, a PageRank analysis could potentially be interesting, but I don't have experience with doing that, or its hazards.
Matt: Yes, I attempted to distinguish between the two Austin, J.'s. I might not have done so perfectly, but I'm pretty sure it's within +/- 2.
Is there an inverse recency bias? The older the philosopher, the higher the probability of having more citations? It would be interesting to check for this.
Cavell?
Thanks! How about Merleau-Ponty and Beauvoir? They seem to have more than 30, but I might be miscounting.
This github poster has a method that leads to different results: https://github.com/juanrloaiza/SEP_TextMining
Just by counting how many times a philosopher is mentioned on SEP articles, you get a slightly different list. Lewis is still mentioned first (if you exclude older philosopher like Kant etc), but Rawls is second, and Wittgenstein and Heidegger are both above Quine and Kripke.
This would make far more sense to me (who can ever forget Kripkenstein?), and also nuances your statement that your exercise can show influence in analytical philosophy and demonstrate continental philosophers are referenced less. Not to challenge your main conclusions (Foucault is indeed ranked lower also in this approach), but the data is far less dramatic than your list would imply.
Is there a single person of color on this list?
Wittgenstein and Heidegger were born before 1900.
Scanning quickly for POC: Jaegwon Kim, Amartya Sen, Richard Sorabji, and Kwame Anthony Appiah
Re: list. Seems to reveal how diametric (or simply irrelevant) Hispanic civilization is to what the Anglo-American world considers philosophy.
Thanks for the continuing comments, folks! Preliminary results:
Merleau-Ponty: 29 (just below the cut!)
Beauvoir: 24 (counting both Beauvoir, S. and de Beauvoir, S.)
Cavell: 14
Remember that citation must be in a main-page entry and as first, second, or last author or editor at the front of a bibliographic line (before the date).
On Hispanic civilization, see today's post:
https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2024/08/women-constitute-12-and-people-of-color.html
On counting names: One advantage of that approach is that authors who are mentioned multiple times in a single article will get more credit than those who are mentioned only once. But simple name counting also introduces noise, since when a person is referenced more than once, sometimes their names are listed multiple times and sometimes with a "------". It is also much less tractable for people with common names or names that are also English words. We can be pretty sure that every reference to "Wittgenstein" is to the famous philosopher, but "Lewis", and "Brown" create analytic problems that aren't easily solved.
On age bias -- my guess is the the Silent Generation and older Boomers are currently advantaged, but more on this later. It's a complex analysis!
The SEP is obviously biased toward anglophone analytic philosophy, and so it's not surprising that J. L. Austin makes the cut and Merleau-Ponty does not, though if you take Sense and Sensibilia and The Phenomenology of Perception, there shouldn't be any doubt that the latter is much more important.
Speaking of persons of colour, though, I saw Sahotra Sarkar, Samir Okasha, and myself on the list. (I wasn't particularly looking for POC's but those were names that struck me, since I know them.)
Thanks, Mohan! I take no stand on Austin vs. Merleau-Ponty.
Regarding people of color, see my analysis here: https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2024/08/women-constitute-12-and-people-of-color.html
The three people you mention are indeed among the 11 I currently estimate to be Hispanic and/or non-White. It's good to hear that others share my perception of how these people are viewed by others in the field.
Thank you, Eric. I was wondering whether one could count citatations in SEP for books. I'm not sure how best to count SEP citations of books with such generic titles as Sense and Sensibilia (Austinites think that it's a devilishly clever title, but in fact it's also the title of an Aristotelian treatise) and the Phenomenology of Perceptionl
In any event, I think the Phenomenology of Perception count is 28, and the Sense and Sensibilia count is 18.
Yes, it's a nice idea. I did a version of this for "works" (whether books or articles) in 2020, and I might update. Here's the 2020 version: https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/2020/07/the-233-most-cited-works-in-stanford.html
Oh thanks! How interesting. I think that list is less revealing than the people list, perhaps because there's a strong tag-along effect. For example, I very much doubt Nozick's Anarchy, State, and Utopia would have come #3 if it didn't get cited alongside Rawls very often (as an influential critique). Anyway, the straight up comparison of Merleau-Ponty's magnum opus and Austin's re perception tends to correct any impression that Austin's philosophy of perception is more visible (even in the anglophone analytic world).
Oh small typo: Linsky (as in Bernard) is misspelled Linksy,
Yes, Mohan, I'm inclined to agree that the author list is more revealing than the works list, largely because the works list will underrate contributions across a series of works and contributions that appear in an articles and then are reprinted or reworked in books or collections with a different name. And thanks for catching the typo -- corrected!
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