Proof that the road to enlightenment can begin with the most trivial subject arrived this month via Wikipedia. Start at any Wikipedia page, then click the first link (ignoring any that are italicised or nestled in brackets), then repeat. For more than 93% of articles, you will end up at philosophy.
The path from Wikipedia's articles on Wombles to philosophy, for instance takes 19 steps, via categories for fiction, narrative, Latin, local government, scholarship and mathematics. The route from housing is somewhat longer, at 25 steps.
But which articles offer up the quickest routes to philosophy? There are some unlikely contenders. It takes only 12 clicks to travel from "Barack Obama citizenship conspiracy theories" through the US constitution, supreme law, nation states and the social sciences to our ultimate destination. "The Only Way is Essex", naturally, provides us with a route that's not only quicker, but more thoughtful: 11 clicks through violence, manipulation, chivalry, conformity, the unconscious mind and German philosophy.
Some senior editors at Wikipedia have theories about why this happens. On a discussion page, they point out that the site suggests users put an article in context by building an early link to a wider category containing the article's subject. As the categories, theoretically at least, grow ever-wider, eventually the user ends up at the widest category of all: philosophy.
This elegant philosophy-at-the-root-of-everything theory has one flaw, though: it works far less well in foreign-language Wikis. As one frustrated Dutch contributor remarked, perhaps it shows that his countrymen "might just think in circles". Alas, it seems not everyone can be as deep as the Essex crew.
