  The hypothesis that philosophy is driven by difference/innovation is checked
in a quantitative manner. This was performed by assigning grades to eight main
philosophical features with respect to seven prominent philosophers, which
allowed sound concepts from multivariate statistics and pattern recognition to
be applied. A number of insights could then be inferred about the way in which
philosophy has been developed. For instance, the evolution of philosophy can be
represented as a trajectory on a plane (two instead of the eight original
dimensions) whose axes are defined by a linear combination of the philosophical
characteristics considered. In addition, all the philosophical moves have been
verified to oppose the prevailing philosophical state. We also identified an
intense and progressive trend toward dialectics.
