Quantitative Metaphilosophy

This conclusive chapter discusses how the quantitative analysis of citations and acknowledgments can improve the discipline of philosophy. Then, it sketches a portrait of the Quantitative Studies of Philosophy (QSP), the new research field that this book aims to contribute to. We first advance a working hypothesis on the scope and methods of QSP. Then, a bespoke corpus of 76 publications representative of QSP is analyzed to reveal the temporal development, main topics, areas of philosophy investigated, axes of analysis, and types of data used in QSP. After this quantitative portrait of QSP, three rationales for a quantitative approach to the study of philosophy are distinguished and assessed: the overcoming of human limitations through computers, the epistemological superiority of data compared to qualitative evidence, and the desire to gain a new perspective on philosophy able to reveal otherwise invisible structures. In the last section, we attempt to imagine the future of QSP, suggesting a research agenda for the next generation of researchers.