THE FABRIC OF KNOWLEDGE. TOWARDS A DOCUMENTAL HISTORY OF LATE ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY

The dissertation aims at presenting an innovative approach (called «documental history») to the study of the history of contemporary philosophy, focusing on the case of Late Analytic Philosophy (LAP). The methodological innovation consists in the application of citation analysis techniques, drawn from the field of scientometrics, to the analysis of the structure and the dynamics of LAP. The main empirical results are presented in four scientometric analyses of LAP, which focus, respectively, on the scientometric distributions of LAP, the co-citation mapping of LAP, the epistemological function of citations within LAP, and the aging of LAP literature. The main theoretical result is the «feedback hypothesis», according to which the «documental space» of LAP shapes the intellectual behavior of analytic philosophers. Thus, the documental space of LAP should be accounted as a factor of philosophical change, besides the traditional intellectual and sociological factors. A key aspect of the dissertation is the interdisciplinary integration of distant fields, such as scientometrics, history of philosophy, and philosophy of science.