The Research Object

In this chapter, the research object of the book is introduced: Late Analytic Philosophy, namely the period of analytic philosophy that spans from 1980 to today. In the first part of the chapter, we discuss the different meanings of analytic philosophy and we characterize it as a socio-professional entity in contemporary academia, abandoning any attempt to define it in philosophical terms. Then, in the second part of the chapter, we focus on the Late Analytic Philosophy and we discuss several historical trends that characterize it: the growing size, the specialization and fragmentation, the professionalization, and the scientization of its research practices. We then argue that a quantitative approach is best suited for investigating these field-level features. In the last part of the chapter, we discuss the specific representation of Late Analytic Philosophy that will ground the empirical analyses of the book. This representation is based on the philosophical articles published in five prestigious journals.