Fact-check
What we checked, and what we found. The first draft of this atlas flagged its own doubts; each was checked against published scholarship. 107 checks, 23 corrections. Dates in ancient philosophy are often conventional, and where scholars disagree the atlas says so.
China & East Asia
Thinker · Laozi
Laozi is dated “traditionally 6th c. BCE”, and the Daodejing is said to have grown over the 4th–3rd centuries BCE.
Chinese tradition, following Sima Qian, makes Laozi a senior contemporary of Confucius in the 6th century BCE, but some modern scholars think he is entirely legendary and that his story conflates several figures. Sayings were probably written down from the late 5th century and consolidated in the 4th; bamboo slips from a Guodian tomb of about 300 BCE hold the oldest known parts of the text, which was fairly stable by the mid-3rd century. The years used to place him on the map are placeholders.
Thinker · Mozi
Mozi, Shang Yang, Hui Shi, Gongsun Long, Zhuangzi and Xunzi are given conventional birth and death years.
None of these dates is secure. Current reference works give: Mozi flourished c. 430 BCE; Shang Yang c. 390–338 BCE; Hui Shi flourished 313 BCE; Gongsun Long c. 320–250 BCE; Zhuangzi flourished in the latter half of the 4th century BCE; Xunzi was born perhaps c. 310 BCE and was still alive in 238 BCE. The atlas’s ranges fall within these and are marked “c.”.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Mohism” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “School of Names” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Xunzi”
Thinker · Shang Yang
After Duke Xiao died, Shang Yang “was executed by being torn apart by chariots”.
Sima Qian’s Records of the Grand Historian says Qin troops attacked Shang Yang and killed him at Mianchi in Zheng, and King Hui of Qin then had his body torn apart by chariots as a public warning. Later retellings often say he was torn apart alive.
Sources: Sima Qian, Shiji, chapter 68, “Biography of Lord Shang” (Wikisource) · Wikipedia, “Shang Yang”
School · Confucianism
Dong Zhongshu is listed as the author of the Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals (“attributed”, c. 110 BCE).
The attribution has been doubted since the Song dynasty, Zhu Xi among the sceptics. The 82-chapter work is undated and is now usually treated as a collection of loosely related Han-dynasty chapters; some parts may reflect Dong’s teaching, others are later. The year is only a placeholder for “Western Han”.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Luxuriant Dew of the Spring and Autumn Annals”
Thinker · Huineng
The Platform Sutra is dated c. 780 and described as attributed to Huineng but compiled by followers.
The earliest known version, preserved at Dunhuang, dates from about 780, almost seventy years after Huineng’s death, and later editions are more than twice as long. Its story is demonstrably unhistorical in places and only makes sense after Shenhui’s campaign to have Huineng recognised as the Sixth Patriarch; its editor may have belonged to the Oxhead school.
Sources: Encyclopedia of Religion, “Huineng” (on Encyclopedia.com)
Thinker · Zhang Zai
The Western Inscription is dated c. 1070, and Correcting the Unenlightened 1076.
Zhang Zai completed Correcting the Unenlightened (Zhengmeng) in 1076. The Western Inscription, first called “Correcting Obstinacy” (Ding wan) and hung on the western wall of his study, has no exact date; it was written in his last years and later placed in the Zhengmeng, so “c. 1070” is an approximation.
Sources: Wikipedia (Chinese), “張載 (北宋)”
Tie between thinkers · Zhang Zai → Cheng Hao
Zhang Zai is called the Cheng brothers’ “uncle by family ties”.
Zhang Zai was the brothers’ biaoshu (表叔), an uncle through a cousin’s line, one generation above them: they were his biaozhi, and the three are remembered as kinsmen of one mind.
Sources: Wikipedia (Chinese), “張載 (北宋)”
Thinker · Cheng Hao
Cheng Hao’s “On Understanding Humaneness” is dated 1080.
The piece is preserved in the Surviving Works of the Two Chengs (book 2A) as Cheng Hao’s answer to Lü Dalin, who came east to study with the brothers after Zhang Zai’s death; Lü’s record of that visit is dated 1079. The year is therefore better given as c. 1079.
Sources: 曾亦、郭晓东：《程明道：本体即功夫，功夫即本体》（儒家网） · 曹树明，《哲学动态》2018年第7期（搜狐转载）
School · School of Names
The “All Under Heaven” chapter of the Zhuangzi, which preserves Hui Shi’s paradoxes, is listed as Zhuangzi’s work of c. 250 BCE.
Since Guo Xiang, only the Inner Chapters have been associated with Zhuangzi himself; “All Under Heaven” is chapter 33, in the Miscellaneous group, and probably dates from the first decades of the Han dynasty. Hui Shi’s own writings are lost.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “School of Names” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Zhuangzi”
School · Mohism
The Mozi’s “Impartial Care” and “Against Offensive War” chapters are listed as Mozi’s work.
The Mozi is a collection of anonymous texts from the 5th to the 3rd century BCE. The core chapters, each surviving in up to three versions, record the doctrines of Mozi’s movement as written down by his followers, not by Mozi himself.
Line between schools · Mohism → School of Names
Mohism is linked to the School of Names as a borrowing: the Mohist canons answer paradoxes like “a white horse is not a horse”.
The later Mohist Dialectics contain passages that seem to rebut the disputers’ ideas, and the Zhuangzi’s “All Under Heaven” shows Mohist sects debating the same “hard and white” and “same and different” themes. Who influenced whom is not recorded; the line marks shared problems.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “School of Names”
Tie between thinkers · Hui Shi → Gongsun Long
Hui Shi is shown as an influence on Gongsun Long.
Both are counted among the disputers (bianzhe) and the later tradition groups them as the School of Names, but no source records that they met or that Gongsun Long learned from Hui Shi. The tie marks a shared line of argument, not a documented contact.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “School of Names”
School · School of Mind (Lu–Wang school)
The School of Mind is drawn from the 12th to the 17th century, ending in 1700.
Wang Yangming learning (Yōmeigaku) went on in Japan: Nakae Tōju (1608–1648) and Kumazawa Banzan (1619–1691) in the 17th century, and a line of “Yangmingists” from Ōshio Heihachirō’s Osaka uprising of 1837 into the Meiji era and beyond. The end date is moved to the late 19th century.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Japanese Confucian Philosophy” · University of Tokyo, review of Kojima Tsuyoshi, The Wang Yangming School in Modern Japan
School · Kyoto School
The Kyoto School is drawn from 1911 to 1990, the year Nishitani died.
The school was never a formal organisation; it is usually described as philosophers spanning several generations: Nishida and Tanabe; then Hisamatsu, Nishitani and others; then Takeuchi, Tsujimura and Ueda. The Stanford Encyclopedia describes it today as both an object of scholarship and a living tradition, so it is now drawn to the present.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Kyoto School”
Thinker · Nishitani Keiji
Nishitani’s 1949 book is given as “The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism” (《虚无主义》).
The 1949 book (Tokyo: Kōbundō) is titled simply Nihirizumu (Nihilism); “The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism” is the title of Graham Parkes and Setsuko Aihara’s English translation (SUNY Press, 1990). His 1961 Shūkyō to wa nanika (What Is Religion?) is known in English as Religion and Nothingness, translated by Jan Van Bragt (1982).
Sources: Wikipedia, “Keiji Nishitani” (list of collected works) · Kyushu University Library catalogue, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (原タイトル: ニヒリズム) · SUNY Press, The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism
Thinker · Tanabe Hajime
Brought to Kyoto by Nishida, Tanabe openly criticised his senior’s philosophy from 1930.
Tanabe’s 1930 essay “Requesting Instruction from Professor Nishida” opened his public criticism of Nishida’s philosophy of place.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “The Kyoto School”
Tie between thinkers · Xunzi → Han Feizi
Xunzi taught Han Fei, and his “Human Nature Is Bad” chapter argues against Mencius.
Han Fei (d. 233 BCE) and Li Si (d. 208 BCE) are recorded among Xunzi’s former students. The “Human Nature Is Bad” chapter is framed as an argument with Mencius, who was probably long dead; its title may not be Xunzi’s own.
India
Thinker · The Buddha (Siddhārtha Gautama)
The Buddha lived c. 480–400 BCE; the traditional dating is 563–483 BCE.
The Stanford Encyclopedia notes that his dates were long put at about 560–480 BCE, but that many scholars now hold he died around 405 BCE. The 563–483 range is an older scholarly reckoning rather than a Buddhist tradition (the Theravāda reckoning is earlier still), so the atlas now calls it the older dating.
Thinker · Mahāvīra
Mahāvīra lived traditionally 599–527 BCE, though many scholars date him later.
Jain tradition gives his birth as 599 BCE and his death as 527 BCE (Śvetāmbara) or 510 BCE (Digambara). Modern historians tie his dates to the Buddha’s: Paul Dundas places his death around 425 BCE or a few years after, and Jeffery D. Long gives c. 499–427 BCE. The atlas keeps the traditional dates on the map and says that scholars date him later.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Mahavira” (citing Dundas and Long) · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Jain Philosophy”
Thinker · Umāsvāti
Umāsvāti lived sometime in the 2nd–5th century CE; plotted at c. 350–420.
Scholars disagree: Padmanabh Jaini places him around the 2nd century, Paul Dundas dates him and the Tattvārtha Sūtra to the 4th–5th century, and Walter Slaje notes doubts even about whether Umāsvāti and Umāsvāmī were one person. The claim that both main sects accept his text is confirmed: it is studied in all four Jain traditions, and both Śvetāmbaras and Digambaras claim him.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Umaswati” (citing Jaini, Dundas, Slaje)
Thinker · Kaṇāda
The Vaiśeṣika Sūtra is dated c. 150 BCE.
Kaṇāda’s century is unknown; estimates run from the 6th to the 2nd century BCE, with some scholars arguing for an early date because the Sūtra never mentions Buddhism. Matilal and Fowler place the text’s systematisation between 200 BCE and the start of the common era, which the atlas’s c. 150 BCE falls within; its doctrines may be older.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Kaṇāda” (citing Matilal 1977, Fowler 2002, Riepe 1961)
Thinker · Akṣapāda Gautama
Akṣapāda Gautama, traditional author of the Nyāya Sūtra, is dated somewhere between the 2nd century BCE and the 2nd century CE.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls the Nyāya-sūtra the oldest extant Nyāya text and dates its attributed author Gautama to c. 200 CE, at the late end of the atlas’s range. Wikipedia has no separate article on him: “Akshapada Gautama” redirects to “Nyāya Sūtras”, so the link now points there directly.
Thinker · Patañjali
Patañjali compiled the Yoga Sūtra, c. 4th–5th century CE (dating disputed).
Estimates for the Yoga Sūtra run from 500 BCE to 450 CE, but later dates are more widely accepted; Philipp Maas places the Pātañjalayogaśāstra at about 400 CE. The older view that he was the grammarian Patañjali (2nd century BCE) is rejected by most scholars: no text before Bhoja (11th century) conflates the two.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” (citing Maas)
Thinker · Īśvarakṛṣṇa
Īśvarakṛṣṇa wrote the Sāṃkhyakārikā in the 4th–5th century CE.
The composition date is unknown, but Paramārtha’s Chinese translation with commentary (557–569 CE) sets a latest date; Gerald Larson places the text in the Gupta period (c. 320–540) and Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s floruit is usually given as c. 350. Wikipedia has no article on him: “Ishvara Krishna” redirects to “Samkhyakarika”, so the link now points there directly.
Thinker · Śaṅkara
Śaṅkara lived c. 700–750; traditionally 788–820.
788–820 is not the tradition’s date but the one early modern scholars proposed. The Stanford Encyclopedia reports that Nakamura argues at length for 700–750 and Potter for the late 7th to early 8th century, and that nothing is reliably known of his life beyond his works. Advaita monastic traditions give dates far earlier still.
Thinker · Gauḍapāda
Gauḍapāda (c. 6th century) was by tradition the teacher of Śaṅkara’s teacher.
The Stanford Encyclopedia confirms that Śaṅkara’s teacher was named Govinda and that, according to tradition, Govinda’s teacher was Gauḍapāda, of the sixth century CE, author of the Gauḍapādakārikās.
Thinker · Madhva
Madhva lived traditionally 1238–1317.
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy and most specialist accounts (Sharma, Bryant) give 1238–1317, the dates followed in the Madhva tradition. Some reference works give 1199–1278 instead. His biography rests largely on the Madhva-vijaya, written by the son of one of his disciples.
Sources: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Madhva” · Wikipedia, “Madhvacharya” (citing Sharma 2000, Bryant 2007)
Thinker · Rāmānuja
Rāmānuja lived traditionally 1017–1137, and is plotted on those dates.
Tradition gives him a life of 120 years (1017–1137); recent scholarship, following John Carman, places him between 1077 and 1157. The atlas now plots him on the scholarly dates and gives both.
Thinker · Jayarāśi Bhaṭṭa
Jayarāśi flourished c. 800 and is linked to the Lokāyata tradition, though his scepticism goes beyond standard Cārvāka materialism.
Datings range from Saṃghavī’s 725–825 and Franco’s 770–830 to the 800–840 proposed in the Stanford Encyclopedia. His affiliation is debated: some read the Tattvopaplavasiṃha as a Lokāyata work, others deny he was a materialist; the encyclopedia calls him a ‘qualified sceptic’ and an atypical offshoot of the Cārvāka tradition, which matches the atlas. The title is variously rendered ‘The Lion [Destroying] the Delusion of Categories’ or ‘The Lion which Annihilates [all] Principles’.
Thinker · Dharmakīrti
Dharmakīrti lived c. 600–660.
The 600–660 dating is Frauwallner’s, resting on an argument from silence. Krasser, drawing on links with Bhāviveka and Kumārila, pushes his activity back to the mid-6th century, and Balcerowicz proposes 550–610. The Stanford Encyclopedia counsels caution or even agnosticism; the Chinese pilgrim Yijing (in India 675–685) mentions him, Xuanzang (629–645) does not.
Tie between thinkers · Kumārila Bhaṭṭa → Dharmakīrti
Dharmakīrti answered Mīmāṃsā arguments for an authorless Veda and against omniscience, Kumārila’s among them.
The Stanford Encyclopedia dates Kumārila’s floruit to around 660, late in the 7th century, while Dharmakīrti’s dates are disputed (mid-6th to mid-7th century). The two certainly argued over the same questions—an authorless Veda, omniscience, word meaning—but who answered whom depends on that unresolved chronology, so the atlas now says so.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Kumārila” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Dharmakīrti”
Thinker · Vasubandhu
Vasubandhu lived c. 4th–5th century CE and was Asaṅga’s younger half-brother.
The Stanford Encyclopedia dates him to the 4th to 5th century, partly on Paramārtha’s report that he taught at the court of a ‘Vikramāditya’ often identified with Chandragupta II (r. 380–415), and confirms that Asaṅga was his elder half-brother who won him over to Yogācāra. Frauwallner’s theory that two Vasubandhus were merged into one still has supporters.
Tie between thinkers · Uddālaka Āruṇi → Yājñavalkya
The Upanishadic teacher lists name Yājñavalkya as Uddālaka’s pupil, though they also clash in debate.
Macdonell and Keith’s Vedic Index, cited by Wikipedia, makes Yājñavalkya the pupil of Uddālaka Āruṇi, whom he later defeats at King Janaka’s court. Other traditions name Vaiśampāyana as his teacher in the Yajurveda. Nothing is known of either man’s dates; the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad is dated c. 700 BCE.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Yajnavalkya” (citing Macdonell & Keith, Vedic Index)
Thinker · Yājñavalkya
The atlas names Yājñavalkya 耶若伏吉耶 and Uddālaka 乌达罗迦·阿鲁尼 in Chinese, and plots both with placeholder years.
Chinese renderings of Sanskrit names are not standardised. Chinese Wikipedia uses 耶若婆佉 for Yājñavalkya, the older Buddhist-style transliteration; 耶若伏吉耶 and 乌达罗迦·阿鲁尼 follow modern Upaniṣad translations, which we could not open to confirm. Neither man has recorded dates: the numbers on the map only place them in the 8th–7th century BCE, as the dates shown in their entries say. The atlas now uses 耶若婆佉, as Chinese Wikipedia does, so the name matches what readers will search for.
Sources: 中文维基百科，“耶若婆佉” · Wikipedia, “Yajnavalkya”
Tie between thinkers · Swami Vivekananda → Sri Aurobindo
Aurobindo said that Vivekananda’s presence came to him in meditation while he was in Alipore jail.
In a letter of 13 September 1946 Sri Aurobindo wrote that he heard ‘constantly the voice of Vivekananda speaking to me for a fortnight in the jail in my solitary meditation’ and ‘felt his presence’, on a limited field of spiritual experience. It is his own later account, as the atlas implies, of his 1908–09 imprisonment in the Alipore bomb case.
Sources: Sri Aurobindo, letter of 13 September 1946 (Letters on Himself and the Ashram)
Tie between thinkers · Mahāvīra → Mohandas K. Gandhi
Gandhi’s non-violence drew on Gujarat’s Jain culture, especially his Jain friend and mentor Raychandbhai.
Gandhi’s Autobiography devotes a chapter to Raychandbhai (Shrimad Rajchandra), the Jain poet and thinker he met on landing in Bombay in 1891. He names him first among ‘three moderns’ who left a deep impress on his life, with Tolstoy and Ruskin, and calls him his refuge in moments of spiritual crisis, though not his guru.
Sources: M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Part II, ch. 1, “Raychandbhai”
Thinker · Swami Vivekananda
A disciple of Ramakrishna, Vivekananda presented Vedānta at the 1893 Parliament of the World’s Religions in Chicago; Raja Yoga appeared in 1896.
He first met Ramakrishna in 1881 (or early 1882), spoke at the opening of the Parliament on 11 September 1893, published Raja Yoga in 1896, and lived 12 January 1863 – 4 July 1902.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Swami Vivekananda”
Greece & Rome
Thinker · Pythagoras
The idea that all things are number is attested for Pythagoras’ followers rather than for Pythagoras himself.
Pythagoras wrote nothing and no contemporary account survives; fuller lives date from 150 to 800 years after his death. Aristotle ascribes the view that things are numbers to the “so-called Pythagoreans” of the 5th century, and Philolaus’ genuine fragments say only that whatever is known has number.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Pythagoras” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Philolaus”
Thinker · Thales
Ancient reports credit Thales with predicting an eclipse, usually dated to 585 BCE.
Herodotus says Thales foretold the eclipse that ended a battle between the Lydians and the Medes, conventionally 28 May 585 BCE. The eclipse itself is secure, but historians doubt that any method available to him, such as the Babylonian cycles, could have predicted a solar eclipse for that place; whether he really did so is open.
Sources: Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Thales of Miletus”
Tie between thinkers · Antisthenes → Diogenes of Sinope
Ancient tradition makes Diogenes Antisthenes’ pupil.
The line Socrates → Antisthenes → Diogenes comes from Diogenes Laertius, who “controversially” names Antisthenes the first Cynic. Plato and Xenophon never call Antisthenes a “dog”, and modern scholars treat the succession as a later construction that tracks real intellectual kinship rather than a documented teacher–pupil bond.
Tie between thinkers · Heraclitus → Parmenides
Parmenides’ attack on “two-headed mortals” is often, though debatably, read as aimed at Heraclitus.
Fragment 6 condemns mortals for whom “to be and not to be are the same and not the same” but names no one. Some scholars hear Heraclitus in it; others see a general target, and recent work stresses how much the two thinkers share. Even their relative dates are uncertain.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Parmenides” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Heraclitus”
Tie between thinkers · Empedocles → Gorgias
According to ancient report, Gorgias studied with Empedocles.
The report goes back to the Hellenistic biographer Satyrus, quoted by Diogenes Laertius (8.58), and is repeated by later writers. The two were near contemporaries, and modern reference works range from accepting it to calling it a biographer’s tale; the atlas keeps the tie but marks it as a report.
Sources: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 8.58 (trans. R. D. Hicks, LacusCurtius) · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Gorgias”
Thinker · Pyrrho
Ancient sources say Pyrrho met Indian “naked sages”; whether this shaped his views is debated.
Pyrrho (c. 365/360–275/270 BCE) went to India with Alexander together with his teacher Anaxarchus, a Democritean; that much is well attested. Diogenes Laertius says the meeting with the gymnosophists shaped his philosophy, but we do not know who they were. C. I. Beckwith (2015) argues Pyrrho was in effect an early Buddhist; most specialists find the parallels suggestive but unproven.
Thinker · Leucippus
Leucippus founded atomism in the 5th century BCE; Epicurus is reported to have doubted he existed.
Nothing firm is known of his dates or birthplace; ancient reports make him a pupil of Zeno of Elea and the teacher of Democritus. Epicurus apparently denied there had been a philosopher Leucippus, and some 19th-century scholars agreed, but Aristotle and Theophrastus treat him as real. The one surviving sentence, from a work On Mind, says nothing happens in vain (or at random) but everything from reason and by necessity.
Thinker · Sextus Empiricus
Sextus Empiricus flourished c. 200 CE.
Nothing in his works fixes his dates. Estimates run from about 100 CE to the first half of the 3rd century, and he may already have been known by the end of the 2nd; “c. 200” is a convenient middle, not evidence. His name marks him as a doctor of the Empiric school of medicine.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Sextus Empiricus”
Thinker · Hypatia
Hypatia was born c. 360.
Her birth year is unknown: suggestions range from about 350 to 370 (MacTutor follows Mueller’s “370?”; Maria Dzielska argued for about 355). Her death in March 415 at the hands of a Christian mob, amid the feud between the bishop Cyril and the prefect Orestes, is well attested. None of her writings survives; she worked with her father Theon on commentaries on Ptolemy and Euclid.
Sources: MacTutor History of Mathematics, “Hypatia of Alexandria”
Thinker · Plato
The years given for Plato’s dialogues (Symposium c. 385, Phaedo c. 380, Republic c. 375 BCE) are approximate.
No dialogue is securely dated. The usual early, middle and late grouping rests on ancient testimony that the Laws came last and on stylometric study of the Greek; it remains disputed whether it reflects the order of composition. The atlas’s years follow the common view that the Symposium, Phaedo and Republic belong to the middle period.
School · Cynicism
No primary texts by Antisthenes or Diogenes survive, so the Cynic works list is empty.
Ancient catalogues list many Cynic writings, but none survives; Cynicism is known through anecdotes and sayings, above all in Diogenes Laertius, Book 6.
School · Pythagoreanism
The Pythagorean school lists only one primary text, Philolaus’ fragments.
Pythagoras wrote nothing, and books later circulated under his name are judged forgeries. Philolaus’ On Nature was probably the first book written by a Pythagorean; about eleven of its fragments are accepted as genuine.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Pythagoras” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Philolaus”
Line between schools · Atomism → Epicureanism
Epicurus added a slight “swerve” of atoms to make room for free choice.
The swerve is not described in Epicurus’ surviving letters; it is known chiefly from Lucretius and Cicero, who attribute it to him. Scholars generally accept it as Epicurean doctrine, but its exact form is unclear.
School · Platonism
Platonism (the Academy) runs from 387 BCE to the 6th century CE.
Plato’s own Academy did not last that long: its head Philo of Larissa left Athens in 88 BCE and Sulla ravaged the grove in 86 BCE. A Platonist school was refounded in Athens around 410 CE and closed under Justinian in 529, but historians find no institutional continuity between the two. The block’s end date marks the Athenian school’s closure; Platonism as a philosophy never stopped.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Platonic Academy” (summarising Plutarch, Agathias, Cameron and Sorabji)
School · Stoicism
Zeno of Citium was a merchant shipwrecked near Athens.
The shipwreck is an ancient anecdote with several versions: Diogenes Laertius reports that Zeno was wrecked carrying purple dye to Piraeus, but also that some say he heard of the wreck while already in Athens, or sold his cargo before turning to philosophy. The atlas now presents it as a story.
Sources: Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 7.2–5 (trans. R. D. Hicks, LacusCurtius)
Thinker · Heraclitus
“You cannot step into the same river twice” is a later paraphrase of Heraclitus.
The line comes from Plato’s Cratylus (402a). Heraclitus’ authentic river fragment (B12) says something subtler: on those who step into the same rivers, other and other waters flow. He reportedly deposited a single book, probably a collection of sayings, in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus.
Line between schools · Atomism → Kalām (Muʿtazila & Ashʿarism)
Kalām atomism echoes Greek atomism.
Maimonides already traced kalām atomism to the Greeks; 19th-century scholars proposed Indian sources instead. Shlomo Pines found real resemblances but judged the question of origin unresolved, and Alnoor Dhanani compared kalām atoms to Epicurean minimal parts without identifying a route of transmission. Kalām built its arguments from paradoxes of the infinite, in its own way; the link is drawn as a resemblance whose path is unknown, which the note states.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Arabic and Islamic Natural Philosophy and Natural Science” · Iqbal Review (1991), on the sources of kalām atomism
The Islamic world
Thinker · Mullā Ṣadrā
Mullā Ṣadrā died in 1640.
1640 (1050 AH) is the traditional date, but there is no clear evidence for it. His grandson reported that he died in Basra in 1045 AH (1635–36), on the way to or from the pilgrimage, and two notes in his manuscripts support this, as does the 1635 completion date of his last works. The Asfār, begun in 1606, was completed in Shiraz in 1628.
Thinker · Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī
Al-Ashʿarī wrote the Maqālāt al-Islāmiyyīn about 920 and al-Ibāna about 925.
Neither book can be dated. The Maqālāt was probably begun in his Muʿtazili years, on the model of al-Balkhī’s book of the same title, and revised later, though al-Dhahabī placed it in his last years. Scholars disagree on whether al-Ibāna came right after his break with the Muʿtazila (c. 912–13) or near the end of his life, and its printed text is suspected of later interpolation. The atlas now gives no year for either.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Maqalat al-Islamiyyin” (citing Leaman, Netton and al-Dhahabī)
Thinker · Al-Kindī
On First Philosophy dates from about 840.
The treatise is dedicated to the caliph al-Muʿtaṣim (reigned 833–842), under whom al-Kindī’s career peaked, so it can only be placed in those years; 840 is a convenient point within them. Only its first part survives. Al-Kindī was born about 800 and died after 866, probably in the early 870s.
Thinker · Jalāl al-Dīn Rūmī
The Dīwān-e Shams dates from about 1250.
It is not a single book written at one time: Rumi composed these ghazals from his meeting with Shams of Tabriz in 1244 and above all after Shams vanished in 1247–48, continuing into the late 1250s. His students collected them after his death; the standard edition by Forūzānfar has about 3,229 ghazals, some of doubtful authenticity. “c. 1250” marks the heart of that period.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi”
School · Kalām (Muʿtazila & Ashʿarism)
Kalām is dated from the 8th century, with Wāṣil ibn ʿAṭāʾ (d. 748).
This is a convention. Sunni sources trace the Muʿtazila to Wāṣil’s withdrawal from the circle of al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī in Basra over the status of the grave sinner, but the story of the name is told rather than documented, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam explains the name differently. Arguments about free will and the sinner (the Qadariyya and Murjiʾa) already ran in the late 7th century, so the start date marks when kalām became a recognisable school, not its first debates.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Muʿtazilism” (citing the Encyclopaedia of Islam)
Thinker · Abū al-Ḥasan al-Ashʿarī
The atlas gives al-Ashʿarī, Saadia and Rumi no teacher ties.
Their documented teachers are real but fall outside the atlas: al-Ashʿarī studied under the Muʿtazili master al-Jubbāʾī and, by the traditional account, broke with him around his fortieth year; Rumi’s poetry and teaching were transformed by the wandering dervish Shams of Tabriz, to whom the Dīwān is dedicated. The missing ties are a limit of the selection, not a claim that they had no teachers.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Abu al-Hasan al-Ashʿari” · Wikipedia, “Divan-i Shams-i Tabrizi”
Medieval Europe
Thinker · Siger of Brabant
Siger wrote the Questions on the Third Book of On the Soul about 1269 and On the Intellective Soul about 1273.
The Questions survive as a student’s report of his lectures, which Van Steenberghen dated to 1269–70, before Aquinas’s On the Unity of the Intellect (1270); it is his most openly Averroist work. On the Intellective Soul is usually placed in 1272–73, after Aquinas’s attack, and moves partly toward Aquinas’s reading. Siger’s own dates are only approximate: born between 1235 and 1240, died between 1281 and 1284.
Sources: Encyclopædia Universalis, “Siger de Brabant” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Influence of Arabic and Islamic Philosophy on the Latin West”
Thinker · Saadia Gaon
Saadia was born in 882.
Older works give 892, based on Abraham ibn Daud’s remark that he died at “about fifty”. A Genizah list of his writings compiled by his sons says he died aged sixty less forty days, which gives 882; this date, closer to him in time and place, is now generally accepted. He was born in the Fayyum in Egypt and became gaon of Sura in 928. His Arabic translation of the Torah (the Tafsīr) cannot be dated precisely, so the atlas no longer gives it a year.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Saadya [Saadiah] Gaon” · Wikipedia, “Saadia Gaon” (notes on the birth year)
Thinker · Boethius
Boethius lived c. 480–524.
Reference works differ: the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy gives c. 480–524, the Stanford Encyclopedia c. 475–77 to probably 526. All agree that he wrote the Consolation of Philosophy in prison shortly before his execution under Theodoric. His two commentaries on Porphyry’s Isagoge are undated but belong to his translation project, much of which was done by about 518.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius” · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Boethius”
Thinker · Jean Buridan
Buridan lived c. 1301–c. 1360.
He was born around 1300 in or near Béthune in Picardy. He last appears alive in a document of 1358 and was dead by 1361, when one of his benefices passed to someone else. His Summulae and his questions on the Physics went through several lectures and versions and cannot be dated exactly; the edition of the Physics questions follows his “final lecture”. The ass between two haystacks is nowhere in his writings.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “John Buridan”
Thinker · William of Ockham
Ockham’s Summa Logicae dates from about 1323 and his Quodlibetal Questions from about 1324.
The Summa Logicae is dated c. 1323–25. The seven Quodlibets record disputations held in London in 1322–24, revised in Avignon in 1324–25. Ockham was born in late 1287 or early 1288 and died in Munich on 9/10 April 1347; he fled Avignon on 26 May 1328 and was excommunicated on 6 June.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “William of Ockham”
School · Scholasticism
Scholasticism ran from c. 1070 to the 16th century, ending with Suárez.
Suárez died in 1617, and the Stanford Encyclopedia stresses that his death “does not mark the end of this university tradition”: Iberian “baroque” scholasticism continued, and some historians would end medieval Latin philosophy only around 1700. The atlas now ends the block in the early 17th century, after Suárez, and treats later school philosophy as its afterlife.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Medieval Philosophy”
School · Patristic & Augustinian philosophy
Patristic philosophy is drawn as ending around 750, with John of Damascus.
This is a convention, and a reasonable one: John of Damascus (c. 660–c. 750) is usually counted the last of the Greek Church Fathers. Historians draw the line between late antiquity and medieval philosophy in several places (c. 500, c. 800, or with Augustine himself), so the boundary should be read as a hinge rather than an ending.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Medieval Philosophy”
Tie between thinkers · Augustine of Hippo → René Descartes
Descartes drew on Augustine’s “if I am mistaken, I exist”; how far is debated.
Arnauld’s Fourth Objections (1641) cited Augustine’s On Free Choice 2.3 as a source of the cogito, and in 1640 Colvius pointed Descartes to City of God 11.26; Descartes thanked them but acknowledged no debt and stressed his different use of the argument. Recent scholarship, notably Stephen Menn’s Descartes and Augustine (1998), argues the debt was extensive. The tie is kept as influence, with the dispute stated.
Sources: The Cambridge Descartes Lexicon, “Augustine, Aurelius”
Early modern Europe
Thinker · Desiderius Erasmus
Erasmus was born c. 1466.
His birth year is genuinely disputed. Erasmus usually reckoned his age as if born in 1466, but the ages he recalled at key events point to 1469, which the Stanford Encyclopedia adopts (28 October 1469). Both years remain in scholarly use.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Desiderius Erasmus” · Wikipedia, “Erasmus” (on the 1466/1469 question)
Thinker · Niccolò Machiavelli
The Prince is dated 1513 and the Discourses on Livy 1517.
The Prince was written at the end of 1513 (perhaps early 1514) and printed only in 1532, after his death. The Discourses were begun around 1514–15, finished in 1518–19 and printed in 1531. The atlas gives the years of writing; 1517 stands for the middle of that span.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Niccolò Machiavelli”
Thinker · John Locke
The Essay Concerning Human Understanding and the Two Treatises are dated 1689.
Both came out in late 1689 (the Essay in December) but carry 1690 on their title pages, so both years appear in references. The English Letter Concerning Toleration also appeared in 1689, after a Latin original printed in Holland the same year.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “John Locke” · Wikisource, title page of the 1690 first edition of the Essay
Thinker · John Stuart Mill
Utilitarianism is dated 1861.
It first appeared as three articles in Fraser’s Magazine in October–December 1861 and was published as a book in London in 1863.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Utilitarianism (book)” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Mill’s Moral and Political Philosophy”
Thinker · Denis Diderot
D’Alembert’s Dream is dated 1769.
Diderot wrote the dialogues in 1769. They circulated anonymously in the manuscript newsletter Correspondance littéraire in 1782 and were first published as a book in 1830, long after his death.
Sources: Wikipedia, “D’Alembert’s Dream” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Denis Diderot”
School · Kant’s critical philosophy
Kantianism is drawn until c. 1930, the end of Neo-Kantianism.
Neo-Kantianism was the dominant movement in German philosophy from about 1870 until the First World War; its standing collapsed in the decades after 1918, and Hitler’s rise in 1933 nearly erased its institutions. An end around 1930 is a reasonable convention. The other end years in this tradition (rationalism mid-18th century, empiricism 1776, social contract 1790, German idealism 1840s) are likewise cut-offs for the map, not events.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Neo-Kantianism”
Tie between thinkers · René Descartes → John Locke
Locke reportedly said Descartes first gave him a relish for philosophy.
The report goes back to Lady Damaris Masham, in whose house Locke spent his last years: her memoir of him, sent to Jean Le Clerc, is the source of Le Clerc’s 1705 Éloge and of the first printed lives, which state that the first books that gave Locke a relish for philosophy were those of Descartes. It is second-hand, but early and close.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Lady Damaris Masham” · Encyclopaedia Britannica, 3rd ed. (1797), “Locke”
School · Rationalism
The school links to the Wikipedia article “Rationalism”.
English Wikipedia has no separate article on Continental rationalism: the title “Continental rationalism” redirects to “Rationalism”, which covers Descartes, Spinoza and Leibniz along with rationalism in general. The link stands.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Continental rationalism” (redirect to “Rationalism”)
Line between schools · British empiricism → Utilitarianism
Bentham wrote that reading Hume made him feel “as if scales had fallen from my eyes”.
In a footnote to A Fragment on Government (1776) Bentham says that the third volume of Hume’s Treatise demonstrates that the foundations of all virtue lie in utility, and that on reading it he “felt as if scales had fallen from my eyes”.
Sources: Bentham, A Fragment on Government (1776), Early Modern Texts edition
Tie between thinkers · Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel → Arthur Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer scheduled his Berlin lectures at the same hour as Hegel’s.
In March 1820 Schopenhauer, newly licensed to teach in Berlin, scheduled his class at the same time as Hegel’s popular lectures; few students came. He had studied in Berlin in 1811–13, where his lecturers included Fichte.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Arthur Schopenhauer”
Tie between thinkers · Immanuel Kant → Charles Sanders Peirce
The note said Peirce studied the Critique of Pure Reason for hours every day for more than three years.
The Stanford Encyclopedia confirms that Peirce began Kant in 1855, his first year at Harvard, spent about three years in intense study of the Critique, and kept rereading it all his life, though he came to judge its logic flawed. The exact daily-hours wording could not be checked in a source, so the note now states what is documented.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Charles Sanders Peirce”
Continental
Thinker · Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas is listed as living (born 1929).
Habermas died on 14 March 2026, aged 96. Goethe University Frankfurt and his publisher Suhrkamp held a memorial symposium for him on 19 June 2026.
Sources: Daily Nous, “Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026)”, 14 March 2026 · Holberg Prize, “In Memoriam: Jürgen Habermas (1929–2026)” · Goethe University Frankfurt, press release on the memorial symposium (2026)
Tie between thinkers · Maurice Merleau-Ponty → Frantz Fanon
Fanon attended Merleau-Ponty’s lectures while studying in Lyon.
The dates fit: Fanon studied medicine in Lyon after the war, and Merleau-Ponty taught psychology at the University of Lyon from 1945 to 1949. That Fanon sat in on his lectures is repeated in biographies and reference works, but the encyclopedia entries we checked do not confirm it; what is certain is that Black Skin, White Masks draws on Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of the body.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Maurice Merleau-Ponty” (Lyon appointments 1945–1949) · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Frantz Fanon” · Wikipedia, “Frantz Fanon” (Lyon studies; claim uncited)
Tie between thinkers · Edmund Husserl → Martin Heidegger
Husserl’s link to Heidegger is coded as influence, not teaching: Heidegger was his assistant, not his doctoral student.
Heidegger took his doctorate in 1913 and wrote his habilitation (1915) under the Neo-Kantian Heinrich Rickert. He became Husserl’s assistant in Freiburg in 1919 and they ran seminars together; he later dedicated Being and Time to Husserl “in friendship and admiration”. “Influence” is the accurate kind.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Martin Heidegger”
Tie between thinkers · Simone de Beauvoir → Jean-Paul Sartre
Beauvoir influenced Sartre’s philosophy.
How far is debated. Beauvoir herself called her philosophy an elaboration of Sartre’s, but since the 1990s scholars have asked whether ideas in Being and Nothingness (1943) first appeared in her novel She Came to Stay (1943); her diaries show ideas developed before, alongside and often against his.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Simone de Beauvoir”
School · Existentialism
Existentialism is drawn from 1843 to 1980: forerunners in the 1840s, a heyday in the 1940s–1960s.
These bounds are a convention, as the label is open-ended: the word was introduced by Gabriel Marcel in 1943, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche are its acknowledged forerunners, and it peaked in post-war France. 1843 is Kierkegaard’s Either/Or and 1980 the death of Sartre; the movement still has academic heirs.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Existentialism”
School · Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics as a school is dated from 1805, Schleiermacher’s first lectures on it.
Schleiermacher first lectured on hermeneutics in 1805, while teaching at Halle, and gave the course repeatedly until 1833; his lecture notes were published after his death, in 1838.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher”
School · Structuralism
Structuralism is drawn from 1916 to 1980.
A convention: 1916 is the publication of Saussure’s Course in General Linguistics; structuralism rose in France after the war with Lévi-Strauss (1949) and peaked in the 1960s; by the late 1960s its tenets were attacked by the post-structuralists, and 1980 marks Barthes’s death.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Structuralism”
Thinker · Walter Benjamin
Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” is dated 1935.
1935 is when he wrote it in Paris exile; he reworked it between December 1935 and February 1936, and it was first published in 1936, in a French translation by Pierre Klossowski in the Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung. Later German versions followed until 1939.
Sources: Wikipedia, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Walter Benjamin”
Thinker · Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Spivak’s “Can the Subaltern Speak?” is dated 1988.
The standard text appeared in 1988 in Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (eds.), Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture (pp. 271–313). It is reported to have grown out of a 1983 talk, and Spivak revised it again in A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999).
Sources: Oxford University Press Learning Link, “Key Thinker: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak” · Wikipedia, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”
Thinker · Antonio Gramsci
Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks are dated 1935.
The atlas dates them by the end of writing: Gramsci filled the notebooks between 1929 and 1935. They were first published by Einaudi in a thematic selection in 1948–51, and in Valentino Gerratana’s complete critical edition in 1975, now the standard text.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Prison Notebooks” · International Gramsci Society, Concordance table of the Prison Notebooks
Thinker · Friedrich Engels
Engels is described as a manufacturer’s son.
His father, Friedrich Engels Sr., was a prosperous cotton-mill owner in Barmen who co-founded the firm Ermen & Engels in 1837, later with a thread factory in Manchester. Engels worked for the firm in Manchester from 1842 and again from 1850, became a partner in 1864 and retired in 1869.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Friedrich Engels”
Analytic & pragmatist
Thinker · John Searle
The atlas listed John Searle as living (born 1932).
Searle died in September 2025, aged 93, in Safety Harbor, Florida. The New York Times obituary (as reported by the Boston Globe) gives 16 September; Philosophy Now gives 17 September.
Sources: Boston Globe, “John Searle, philosopher who wrestled with AI, dies at 93” (2025) · Philosophy Now, “John Searle 1932–2025”
Thinker · Alasdair MacIntyre
Alasdair MacIntyre died in 2025.
MacIntyre died on 21 May 2025, aged 96; the University of Notre Dame’s de Nicola Center announced his death on 23 May. He was born in Glasgow on 12 January 1929.
Thinker · Daniel Dennett
Daniel Dennett died in 2024.
Dennett died on 19 April 2024, aged 82, as reported in the New York Times obituary cited by the National Center for Science Education.
Sources: NCSE, “Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and evolution enthusiast, dies at 82” · Philosophy Now, “Daniel C. Dennett 1942–2024”
Thinker · Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel is living; he studied at Oxford as well as Harvard, and Rawls supervised his doctorate.
Nagel, born in Belgrade on 4 July 1937, took a BA at Cornell (1958), a BPhil at Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1960), and a Harvard PhD (1963) supervised by John Rawls. No report of his death was found as of October 2026. His Oxford years overlapped with Austin’s, but no teaching relationship is documented, so no tie is drawn.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Thomas Nagel”
Thinker · Peter Singer
Peter Singer is living.
Singer is Emeritus Professor of Bioethics at Princeton and was still publishing columns in October 2026. A report of his death that circulated in July 2026 was a hoax.
Sources: Project Syndicate, columnist page: Peter Singer · Wikipedia, “Peter Singer”
Thinker · Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum is living and teaches at Chicago.
Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, and in September 2026 the Library of Congress named her winner of the 2026 Kluge Prize.
Sources: University of Chicago Law School, faculty page: Martha C. Nussbaum · Daily Nous, “Nussbaum Wins Kluge Prize”
Thinker · David Chalmers
David Chalmers is living and teaches at NYU.
Chalmers, born 20 April 1966, is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science at New York University and co-director of its Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness; he took his PhD at Indiana University in 1993.
Sources: David Chalmers, curriculum vitae
Thinker · David Chalmers
The atlas gave the Chinese title of Reality+ as 《现实+》, a working translation.
A Chinese edition exists: 《现实+：每个虚拟世界都是一个新的现实》, translated by Xiong Xiang (熊祥) and published by CITIC Press (见识城邦) in December 2022.
Sources: The Paper (澎湃新闻), excerpt with publication details of 《现实+》
Thinker · A. J. Ayer
The Chinese title of Ayer’s The Problem of Knowledge (1956) is given as 《知识问题》.
The book is Ayer’s 1956 study of scepticism, perception, memory and other minds. No published Chinese translation could be found, so 《知识问题》 remains a descriptive rendering of the title, not the name of an edition.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Alfred Jules Ayer”
Thinker · Gilbert Ryle
The Chinese title of Ryle’s Dilemmas (1954) is given as 《两难》.
Dilemmas collects Ryle’s Tarner Lectures on apparent conflicts between theories. No published Chinese translation could be found, so 《两难》 remains a descriptive rendering of the title.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Gilbert Ryle”
Tie between thinkers · Rudolf Carnap → W. V. O. Quine
Carnap both shaped Quine and was the main target of his critique, so the atlas draws two ties between them.
Quine’s 1932–33 fellowship took him to Prague, where Carnap was teaching; the Stanford Encyclopedia names the Logical Empiricists, “especially Carnap”, as Quine’s strongest influence, and reads “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” (1951) as largely a debate with Carnap. Both ties stand.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Willard Van Orman Quine”
Tie between thinkers · Charles Sanders Peirce → John Dewey
Dewey took Peirce’s logic course at Johns Hopkins; the atlas records this as influence rather than teaching.
As a graduate student at Johns Hopkins (1882–84) Dewey studied logic with Peirce but found it “too mathematical” and did not pursue it; Peirce had no sizable impact on him then, though Dewey later credited Peirce’s pragmatism as an important influence. “Influenced” is the right kind of tie.
Tie between thinkers · Gilbert Ryle → A. J. Ayer
Ryle was Ayer’s tutor at Christ Church and suggested he go to Vienna in 1933.
Ryle was one of Ayer’s tutors at Christ Church, Oxford; having met Schlick in 1930, he encouraged Ayer to attend the Vienna Circle, which Ayer did from January to March 1933.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Alfred Jules Ayer”
Tie between thinkers · G. E. Moore → Bertrand Russell
The note quoted Russell as following Moore’s rebellion against idealism “with a sense of emancipation”.
That wording could not be found in Russell’s writings. His account in My Philosophical Development dates the revolt against Kant and Hegel to late 1898: “Moore led the way, but I followed closely in his footsteps.” The note now quotes this.
School · Post-positivist philosophy of science
The school’s “read more” link points to the Wikipedia article “Postpositivism”.
The article covers the critique of positivism in philosophy of science and the social sciences, and its history section discusses Popper’s falsificationism and Kuhn’s paradigms; Quine is mentioned only in passing. It is the closest general article and is kept.
Sources: Wikipedia, “Postpositivism”
School · Liberal theories of justice (Rawls and after)
The school links to the article on A Theory of Justice because there is no dedicated article.
English Wikipedia has no article titled “Liberal egalitarianism” (the page returns 404); Rawls’s A Theory of Justice is the founding text of the debate, so the link is kept.
Sources: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Egalitarianism”
Tie between thinkers · John Dewey → B. R. Ambedkar
Ambedkar studied under John Dewey at Columbia University (1913–16) and drew on his ideas of democracy.
Ambedkar studied at Columbia from 1913 to 1916 (MA 1915) and in Annihilation of Caste (1936) calls ‘Prof. John Dewey, who was my teacher and to whom I owe so much’. His formal dissertation adviser was the economist Edwin Seligman, so ‘taught’ means he took Dewey’s classes, not that Dewey supervised him.
Sources: Frances Pritchett, Ambedkar timeline, 1910s (Columbia University)