Abstract

Bibliometric research is an important tool for examining the scientific output of various fields of study. By conducting such research, it is possible to see how the influences of different people, ideologies and discoveries have affected the scientific discourse. One way of doing this is through topic modelling, which consists of organizing the words that are used within a set of text data into different topics. To the knowledge of the author, no topic modelling study of Swedish philosophy had previously been conducted. For this reason, this study aimed to partially fill the gap by exploring the publications of one specific Swedish philosophical journal. Using Python, a topic model with 14 topics was created from the journal Filosofisk tidskrift. The change of these topics between the years 1980 and 2020 was examined. Specific attention was given to possible differences between analytic and Continental philosophy. To validate the results, an interview was also held with Fredrik Stjernberg, professor in theoretical philosophy. The results displayed a varied popularity and change for each topic. Too little Continental philosophy was discovered for a proper comparison, leading to the conclusion that Continental philosophy is not very influential in Swedish philosophical discourse. Future research should be conducted on peer-reviewed articles and be backed up by greater professional philosophical aid.