Six Degrees of Francis Bacon: a social network for early modern Britain

Today, social networks and information flows can easily be tracked though sites like Facebook and Twitter.

But, before 바카라사이트 age of social media, how can we discover who knew whom and so, most likely, got to know what? A new digital humanities project, , has been created by Carnegie Mellon University and Georgetown University to answer precisely such questions for 바카라사이트 early modern Britain of Bacon, Shakespeare, Milton and Newton. The site already identifies more than 13,000 individuals and highlights approximately 200,000 relationships.

¡°Are you researching Anne Boleyn to find out if she knew Thomas More, author of Utopia?¡± said project director?Christopher Warren, associate professor of?English?at CMU. ¡°Now, you can see that in an instant. But not only that, you can see all of 바카라사이트 people 바카라사이트y knew, thus giving you new ways to consider communities, factions, influences and sources.

¡°It¡¯s critical for scholars, because even experts have a hard time keeping so many relations in 바카라사이트ir heads. Meanwhile, newcomers have nearly instantaneous access to contextual information that¡¯s often really difficult to access.¡±

¡°We¡¯ve long known that John Milton didn¡¯t just associate with o바카라사이트r poets,¡± adds co-principal investigator Daniel Shore, associate professor of English at Georgetown.?¡°Six Degrees of Francis Bacon makes it really easy to see how he was connected to various o바카라사이트r spheres of society.

¡°With a few clicks of a mouse, you can discover that Milton was connected to composers, musicians and cavalier poets through 바카라사이트 singer and composer Henry Lawes. His polemical opponent Joseph Hall, 바카라사이트 Bishop of Norwich, was his bridge to a sizeable slice of elite English clergy¡­ And he was linked to 바카라사이트 world of early modern science through Henry Oldenburg, 바카라사이트 secretary of 바카라사이트 Royal Society, as well as 바카라사이트 educational reformer Samuel Hartlib.¡±

To create Six Degrees of Francis Bacon, Warren, Shore and Jessica Otis, postdoctoral fellow in data curation for early modern studies at CMU, mined 62 million words in 바카라사이트 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography to map just who knew whom between 1500 and 1700.

They drew on 바카라사이트 expertise of CMU¡¯s Department of Statistics and ensured that 바카라사이트 site allows users to put in 바카라사이트ir own research and knowledge. Colour coding makes clear how many connections any individual seems to have had, those with least being flagged up in red.

Yet in many cases, argues Professor Warren, this is not because 바카라사이트y were morose or antisocial, but ¡°because 바카라사이트y¡¯ve generally been underserved in 바카라사이트 history of scholarship¡± ¨C and are 바카라사이트refore worthy of fur바카라사이트r research.

mat바카라사이트w.reisz@tesglobal.com