Zoom to see the web of thinkers and how they are all connected

INFOGRAPHIC

The Most Influential Thinkers In History 

And How Their Ideas Are Connected

Matthew Boesler

Brendan Griff at Griff's Graphs put together an awesome infographic mapping the connections between influential thinkers and which other philosophers, authors, economists, comedians, and the like have been influenced by their ideas throughout history.

Here is Griff's explanation:

I used a database version of Wikipedia to extract all people with known influences and made this map. The bigger the node, the bigger influence that person had on the rest of the network. Nietzsche, Kant, Hegel, Hemingway, Shakespeare, Plato, Aristotle, Kafka, and Lovecraft all, as one would expect, appear as the largest nodes. Around these nodes, cluster other personalities who are affiliated (depends on distance). Highlighting communities by colour reveals sub-networks within the total structure. You’ll notice common themes amongst similarly coloured authors.

Read more: www.businessinsider.com