When one thinks of philosophers from Oxford, one thinks of John Locke tucked in a picturesque garden surrounded by old stone walls and chapels writing and thinking away. Or, from the last century, such folks as Isaiah Berlin or Sir Bernard Williams. Richard Price offers a new image. A Ph D and Prize Fellow at All Souls College, Richard wrote his thesis on the philosophy of perception and how to draw the line between visible and non-visible properties. Then he went into business, moved to San Francisco, and raised millions of dollars for an online gig. If you'd like to read his thesis you can easily do so by logging on to Academia.edu, a site he founded for sharing research.
Price says the site accelerates academic research by allowing academics (and non-academic researchers) to share their work, even before it's published in a standard journal. We talk to Richard about the features of the site and what makes it different from some of the other sharing platforms such as Mendeley and Google Scholar. Richard also shares how he became a businessman, saying that "there are connections between entrepreneurship and philosophy." One of my favorite questions of late has been what role philosophers play in our present age of science. With an open style and a pleasant agreeableness, Price is happy to speak up for his fellow philosophers.
Chapters:
0:50 Connections between entrepreneurship and philosophy
6:19 How did you get a ".edu" address?
10:04 Difference from other platforms (Mendeley, Google Scholar)
14:37 Peer review is evolving
24:17 What are the privacy challenges for the new model?
26:42 Site numbers
28:42 Can research truly be sped up?
33:34 What's your ultimate goal for the site?
38:46 How do you monetize scientific content?
43:47 What is the role of philosophy in our age of science?
