[rwnspace]

I believe the author was referring to work done in reason, logic and 'natural philosophy' from the time of Kant/Hume/Leibniz onwards, so, 18thC+.

One of the reasons philosophy doesn't seem so well these days - I think - is because the value our society places on software engineers is so much higher. The same kinds of natural ability which help with reasoning about the behaviour of some function, help with reasoning about the shape of some concept in philosophy.

I don't particularly lament this shift, as a philosophy grad who is working on becoming a software engineer. I only lament that experimental and multi-disciplinary philosophy is becoming cool and interesting only in the past decade or so.