What is this?

SEP Navigator is a visual + playful map of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy — ~1,800 entries, ~19,000 citations between them. Two views, one citation graph: explore by hierarchy, by who-cites-whom, or race through the network.

The two main views

Taxonomy — a treemap of philosophy's five branches: History, Moral, Metaphysics, Knowledge, Logic. Click any cell to drill down; click an article to read it inline.

Citations — a force-directed network. Each dot is an article, each line a citation. Bigger dots are more cited. Drag to pan, zoom with the slider, search by name, filter by category.

Both views are linked: click anything in one and the other reacts.

Other tools in the dock

? globe — Curiosities: graph trivia like the furthest pair, most-cited articles, lonely articles, and "bridge" articles that hold the graph together. Filter by category to recompute over a subgraph.

Stopwatch — Speedrun: pick two articles and race through citations to get from start to target in as few clicks as possible.

List — Reading List: articles you've starred, plus a history of everything you've visited.

Dice (top right) — opens a random article. Surprise yourself.

Saved across sessions

Your reading list, visited articles, and speedrun stats are stored locally in your browser. Nothing is sent anywhere. Clear your browser data to reset.

Taxonomy (treemap)

Click any cell to drill into that category. The path (Philosophy > Metaphysics > ...) shows above the chart. Use Back / Reset in the red header to step out. Click an article cell to load it inline.

Citations (network)

Drag the canvas to pan. Zoom with the slider, or double-click an empty spot. The 10 largest nodes (most-cited) are always labelled. Hover any node to see its details. Click a node to focus on it + its neighbors.

The two dropdowns and search box at the top of the panel filter the graph.

Reading inline

When you click an article in either view, the full SEP page loads inline as a preview with the article's category color outlining it. Visited articles get a small dot in the treemap and a golden ring on the network if saved.

Saving + history

Hit the star (☆) in any preview to save the article to your Reading List. Open the Reading List from the dock to see Saved and Visited tabs. The Visited tab has a "Clear all" if you want to start over.

Curiosities

Open the "?" globe in the dock. You'll see graph facts: the furthest pair (the two articles farthest apart), most central articles, lonely ones, and bridge articles. The category strip at the top lets you recompute everything inside a subgraph.

Speedrun

Open the stopwatch in the dock. Pick a start + target (or click 🎲 for a random pair). Pick categories to limit the playing field. During a race only the current article + its neighbors are clickable; the target pulses gold. Reach the target in as few clicks as possible. Hit Share on the victory screen to copy a URL — anyone who opens it gets the same race with your score as a target to beat.

Windows + dock

Each floating panel has three traffic lights: red closes, yellow minimizes, green maximizes (or double-click the header). Drag the title bar to move. Resize from any edge or corner.

The menubar at the very top has a Window menu that snaps the treemap + network into a clean 50/50 split.

Random article

The dice in the top right of the red header. Roll it whenever you want to fall into something unexpected.

Race through SEP citations

Pick a starting article and a target. Then navigate the citation network to reach the target in as few clicks as possible. Click only on connected nodes.

Built by

Axel La Pira

Data

Scraped from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy · plato.stanford.edu

Made with

D3.js · vanilla JavaScript

© 2026 SEP Navigator