Everything Leads Down The Same Rabbit Hole

[Chesterton]

I recently heard someone say that no matter what Wikipedia entry you're reading, if you click on the first non-italicized link in the page, and do that on the next page, and so on, you always wind up at philosophy (but skipping links which merely refer to the root language of the entry word). Thought I'd give it a try on a couple of random things. Here are the results:

Initial Entry: Potato​

Root Vegetable
Food
Nutrient
Chemical Substance
Matter
Classical Physics
Paradigm Shift
Thomas Kuhn
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy (!)

Initial Entry: Battle of The Bulge​

Offensive
Military Operation
Military Actions
State
Polity
Collective Identity
Belongingness
Emotion
Biology
Natural Science
Branches of Science
Science
Knowledge (which is part of Wiki's series on, you guessed it, Philosophy!)

So it worked for the first two things I tried. I certainly can't vouch that it always works, but it's interesting. I guess looked at one way, it's just common sense that this would happen, but still, this little game seems to tell us that nobody really knows anything.

 

[FenderTL5]

I recently heard someone say that no matter what Wikipedia entry you're reading, if you click on the first non-italicized link in the page, and do that on the next page, and so on, you always wind up at philosophy (but skipping links which merely refer to the root language of the entry word). Thought I'd give it a try on a couple of random things. Here are the results:

Initial Entry: Potato​

Root Vegetable
Food
Nutrient
Chemical Substance
Matter
Classical Physics
Paradigm Shift
Thomas Kuhn
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy (!)

Initial Entry: Battle of The Bulge​

Offensive
Military Operation
Military Actions
State
Polity
Collective Identity
Belongingness
Emotion
Biology
Natural Science
Branches of Science
Science
Knowledge (which is part of Wiki's series on, you guessed it, Philosophy!)

So it worked for the first two things I tried. I certainly can't vouch that it always works, but it's interesting. I guess looked at one way, it's just common sense that this would happen, but still, this little game seems to tell us that nobody really knows anything.

Or perhaps it's merely the wikipedia version of 'Six Degrees from Kevin Bacon'

 

[durangodawood]

Mountain bike
Bicycle
Human-powered transport
Transport
Motion
Physics
Natural science
Branches of science
Science
Knowledge (Part of a series on Philosophy)

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

I recently heard someone say that no matter what Wikipedia entry you're reading, if you click on the first non-italicized link in the page, and do that on the next page, and so on, you always wind up at philosophy (but skipping links which merely refer to the root language of the entry word). Thought I'd give it a try on a couple of random things. Here are the results:

Initial Entry: Potato​

Root Vegetable
Food
Nutrient
Chemical Substance
Matter
Classical Physics
Paradigm Shift
Thomas Kuhn
Philosophy of Science
Philosophy (!)

Initial Entry: Battle of The Bulge​

Offensive
Military Operation
Military Actions
State
Polity
Collective Identity
Belongingness
Emotion
Biology
Natural Science
Branches of Science
Science
Knowledge (which is part of Wiki's series on, you guessed it, Philosophy!)

So it worked for the first two things I tried. I certainly can't vouch that it always works, but it's interesting. I guess looked at one way, it's just common sense that this would happen, but still, this little game seems to tell us that nobody really knows anything.

You also have to ignore non-italicised links in parentheses.

 

[Chesterton]

You also have to ignore non-italicised links in parentheses.

Hmm, I wonder why that is. I didn't come across one of those.

But when the first link was a language reference like "Latin" or "Greek", it got me stuck in a loop that goes like this:

Latin - Classical Language - Language - Grammar - Linguistics - Science - Latin

So since "Latin" is the first link in the entry for "Science", we can definitively conclude that Science does not lead to Philosophy.

 

[Chesterton]

Marty Feldman
Comedian
Entertainment
Interest (emotion)
Emotion
Biology
Natural science
Branches of science
Science
Knowledge