Wikipedia trivia - if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parenthesis or italics and then repeat, you will eventually end up at "Philosophy."It is true probably because the first paragraph of every article attempts to put the topic in a wider context, which means the first link will probably lead to a topic broader than the previous one, and all roads lead back to how we organise information and knowledge, and how we think -- philosophy!!
But what is just as interesting is how all those paths converge. So I did some clicking around, and came up with this diagram. It traces fields of study (=majors, ="concentrations" because Brown needs to be special) offered at the undergraduate level at Brown University (see a list here) through the Wikipedia maze and shows how they all converge onto philosophy. This is an incomplete selection of concentrations because not all would fit, and I excluded 'sub-field' concentrations e.g. biochem, biophysics, geo-bio...with the exception of marine biology, which is my concentration and therefore I am obviously biased toward wanting it in there.
Interestingly enough, there are only 3 links into philosophy for 40+ fields of study mapped, and the third link only includes one field, education. Everything else eventually goes back to math or to academia, academic communities and interactions. Some paths are also surprisingly weird...check out engineering and business studies. Business studies is linked through 'planet' but astronomy isn't.*it is also the result of Jenni posting this on Facebook so that I was thoroughly distracted for the rest of the night and did no studying for my GRE. so this entire post is her fault.
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