Explorations in the Digital History of Ideas (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781009263603)

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.

Author: Peter de Bolla
ISBN-10: 1009263609
ISBN-13: 9781009263603
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/10/2025
Pages: 310
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.92lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.65d