Refuting XKCD

Philosophy is not fundamental; mathematics is.

The wildly popular comic XKCD posted a mildly funny cartoon today with an intriguing rollover text.

Wikipedia trivia: if you take any article, click on the first link in the article text not in parentheses or italics, and then repeat, you will eventually end up at Philosophy.

I emailed my philosopher* and we worked on a few examples. N.T. Wright led to Philosophy in 8 steps. Brick took 21 steps; String Cheese 26. I tried my most recent Wikipedia search: Flag of Syria led to Philosophy in 21 steps as well. But then we tried Michelle Obama. She led through a series of political pages (e.g. Constitution) to Mathematics. And ended there: Mathematics leads to an infinite loop:

1. Mathematics
2. Quantity
3. Magnitude
4. Ordering
5. Mathematics

We had found a tree of pages that did not lead back to Philosophy. But what does Philosophy lead to? Does it also loop back to itself in a narrow circle of nearby concepts? Here's what we found:

1. Philosophy
2. Rational Argument (reason)
3. Rationality
4. (Mental) Exercise
5. Alzheimer's Disease
6. Dementia
7. Latin
8. Latium
9. Rome
10. Capital
11. Seat of local government
12. Local government
13. State (polity)
14. Social science
15. Scholarly method
16. Scholasticism
17. Academics (-ia)
18. Community
19. Group
20. Group (mathematics)
21. Mathematics

Mathematics, in the current configuration of wikipedia, at least, supervenes philosophy. Granted, the path is not made of obvious or deep concepts - Alzheimer's anyone? - and Wikipedia can easily be edited to reverse this relationship. But it's pretty telling, nonetheless.

* If you don't already retain a personal philosopher, I recommend doing so.