Definition of Scope

Noesis works on the principle of passing search requests through selected regions of cyberspace. For the purposes of this project, regions are defined by their relevance to the academic study of philosophy, where the determination of relevance is arrived at organically by mapping web domains representing philosophy professors at work (learn more). Noesis indexes five of these domains, as indicated by the blue buttons above and below. They are defined by the following:

In addition to these five, Noesis uses two other domains that are not part of its overall mapping strategy, but are further refinements within it. The category, Author Archives, is a subset of Faculty Webspace and consists of directories set aside by faculty members for the purpose of collecting scholarly papers. The Scholarship category is synthetic, a combination of Author Archives, Online Journals and Reference Works with paper archives from Associations and Departments. An eighth category, Stanford Encyclopedia, is used to indicate the contents of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

The relationships between these eight domains are represented by the following tree:

Users can search all of Noesis at once or filter their searches to the branches of this tree by selecting the appropriate domain name from the bottom of any return set after running a search. 

Materially, the search space of Noesis is determined directly by the websites to which it links. For an enumerated table of contents, visit the Web Index by clicking one of the blue buttons above.