Explorations in the digital history of ideas : new methods and computational approaches / edited by Peter de Bolla.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

De Bolla, Peter, 1957- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Intellectual life--History--Data processing--Case studies.

Intellectual life.

History--Statistical methods.

History.

Historiometry.

Digital humanities.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xviii, 292 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Place of Publication:

Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2024.

Summary:

What would the history of ideas look like if we were able to read the entire archive of printed material of a historical period? Would our 'great men (usually)' story of how ideas are formed and change over time begin to look very different? This book explores these questions through case studies on ideas such as 'liberty', 'republicanism' or 'government' using digital humanities approaches to large scale text data sets. It sets out the methodologies and tools created by the Cambridge Concept Lab as exemplifications of how new digital methods can open up the history of ideas to heretofore unseen avenues of enquiry and evidence. By applying text mining techniques to intellectual history or the history of concepts, this book explains how computational approaches to text mining can substantially increase the power of our understanding of ideas in history.

Contents:

Distributional concept analysis and the digital history of ideas / Peter de Bolla, Ewan Jones, Paul Nulty, Gabriel Recchia and John Regan

Operationalizing conceptual structure / Paul Nulty

The idea of liberty, 1600-1800 / Peter de Bolla, Ewan Jones, Paul Nulty, Gabriel Recchia and John Regan

The idea of government in the British eighteenth century / Peter de Bolla, Ewan Jones, Paul Nulty, Gabriel Recchia and John Regan

Republicanism in the founding of America / Peter de Bolla

Enlightenment entanglements of improvement and growth / Peter de Bolla, Ryan Heuser and Mark Algee-Hewitt

The idea of commercial society : changing contexts and scales / John Regan

The age of irritability / Ewan Jones and Natalie Roxburgh

On bubbles and bubbling : the idea of 'the South Sea bubble' / Claire Wilkinson

Embedded ideas : revolutionary theory and political science in the eighteenth century / Mark Algee-Hewitt

Computing Koselleck : modeling semantic revolutions, 1720-1960 / Ryan Heuser.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 13 Nov 2023).

Other Format:

Print version:

ISBN:

9781009263610 (ebook)

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license.