Why These Tools
Why Markdown, GitHub, etc?
Editing and publishing intellectual matter the traditional way often involves a lot of overhead and manual work that has little or nothing to do with the content. This effort makes sense where the manuscript and published work are physically different objects, and even more so where the manuscript was something hand-written which needed to be converted to a printed form. But in the digital age where the input and output is digital text, such expensive hurdles are overcome and replaced with a streamlined process that focuses on the content rather than the formatting of the document. Right? Unfortunately, this is not the case. While the tools have become digital, the practice remains much the same, if not worsened: not only must editors manually format virtually entire documents in order that they are in keeping with the form of the collection, but often times the software used is of varying editions, some of which bring with them strange bugs that find they way into the main editing file and cause bizarre behavior that itself calls for an investigation into the arcane. Where the input and output is digital text, such issues should made trivial if not non-existent.
Markdown is basically simple text but with minimal additions, such as headers, italics, bold, bullet points and a few others. For the majority of tasks, this is all that’s needed. Markdown aligns well with our ideal to focus on the content rather than formatting. Where Markdown falls short, however, such as tables, footnotes, and other things, we can simply programmatically extend its functionality through plugins. Another non-trivial reason for using Markdown is that anyone can pick up and start using Markdown without being locked to any particular vendor, and, therefore, in essence the format is universal.
Git is a versioning control system that is ubiquitous in the world of software. Programmers essentially work in files of text, writing code in text or symbols, creating functionality and interactivity through code in text, and when a particular software grows beyond a dozen or so software engineers it quickly becomes a challenge to keep track of who has written what, what is compatible with what, what version something is, etc. This is where Git comes. It effectively “saves” the code one writes but also keeps track of versions, data-integrity, compatibility between versions and much more. Imagine coordinating thousands of engineers on a very large software !
GitHub allows one to store and manage one’s code. It uses Git but offers a suite of additional tools integrated with the coding workflow. It also offers a friendly interface for one to work directly with code from the browser. Of the additional tools GitHub offers, it is worth mentioning that it has a system of commenting and feedback which is key for developing heavy-duty philosophical ideas.
What these tools enable us to do is to build consensus on the philosophical material. Simple and basic terms can be hashed out, allowing for exploration of more intricate and detailed material. And where the elementary matters are left wanting, the path is open for us to go back exactly where we need to make the appropriate changes.
A second crucial feature through these tools is collaboration. If a group working together is unable to be on the same page, then there will always be some externality with regards to the idea and its expression, but through these tools we can can be on the same page, literally, and pool together our mental resources. Philosophy is implicitly systematic, because ideas and patterns are communicated and every philosopher is one instance of how things hang together, informed by the thread of history. Now, we try to make philosophy explicitly systematic, not only in its idea but also its expression.
Moreover, the open-source principles found in software aligns well with this ideal. Just as every philosopher makes their contribution towards the account of what is to develop their understanding, so does the programmer contribute their changes to the code of the program to develop its functionality, and so will we contribute towards the understanding of philosophy with its source being open and accessible to everyone.
Taking the three points above together, the direction and growth of this project depends as much on its individual contributors as it does on its coordination, such that this cannot but bring together an intellectual community. Indeed, the world of ideas already forms an intellectual community, but it is continually being stunted and entangled in senseless metrics from forces outside. In this digital space, we will aim to keep the senseless from sense unless of course it has a comedic advantage. This leads to the final point, which is that these tools enable us to not only focus on the content that matters but to make the knowledge public and freely available.