Mitchell centre seminar series
| Dates: | 27 February 2019 |
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| Times: | 16:00 - 17:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Matteo Valleriani |
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Matteo Valleriani,
The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
The Sphere. A multilayer network approach to knowledge evolution in history
The lecture shows the ongoing development of a method to structure and model data which allows us to trace the diffusion of innovations and detect processes of homogenization in scientific knowledge throughout history. The data is extracted from a collection of over 350 textbooks, produced between 1472 and 1650, which were used in introductory classes on astronomy at all European universities. Three conceptually divided kinds of data are modelled together: data concerning the scientific content of the treatises, data concerning their materiality, and data concerning all the social actors involved in the production and marketing of the books.
After a brief introduction to the historical project, an overview will be given of the methods of data extraction, the ontology of the dataset, and the structure of the data. Finally, the multilayer network model will be discussed.
The aim of the project (https://sphaera.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de) is to explain the mechanisms that transformed natural philosophy into modern science and gave the latter the role of paradigm for a shared scientific identity in Europe at the turn of the seventeenth century.
Speaker
Matteo Valleriani
Organisation: The Max Planck Institute for the History of Science
Biography: valleriani@mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de
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G7
Humanities Bridgeford Street
Manchester
