RAPID: Digging Into the Enlightenment: Mapping the Republic of Letters

“共和国的信件”-一个术语之间使用ca。1500年至1800年，用来描述学术社区和知识网络，被描述为一个失落的大陆，一个没有边界的国家。它与贸易、外交和传教网络紧密相连，出现于印刷术问世的最初几十年，在创建学术团体和学术期刊的时代开花结果，当学术生活的全面专业化和现代民族国家的兴起使这个跨国学术乌托邦成为过去的梦想时，它就衰落了。围绕着个人、机构和项目组织起来的“文学共和国”是知识在这个早期时代传播的主要方式。虽然它的起源是英国和欧洲，但文学共和国的足迹遍布欧洲人旅行、殖民和定居的地方，包括殖民地美洲。《文学共和国》在时间和空间上表达了广泛的相关性，因此，在很大程度上，它可以被视为一个基于原则、交流方法和哲学理想的个人之间的松散联系，跨越了数百年的时间。在另一个极端，它表现为紧密联系的个人群体，直接通过通信、沙龙或通过出版物和中介间接分享想法。在每一种情况下，都有许多条件和约束影响网络过程，包括语言、位置、社交圈、政治事件、阴谋、宗教信仰和性别。这些数据中的大部分已经被捕获，并将使我们能够映射网络的物理和虚拟拓扑。结合地理数据，历史事件和社会数据的影响，这是一个很好的案例研究如何在全球范围内传播的想法与动态过程，在当地规模运作。Christopher Weaver博士和他的同事将创建技术来可视化和分析从历史文本文档中提取的多维，多尺度和不确定的异构数据。此外，他们将开发交互式设计，使个人和合作学者能够剖析，重温，分享，探索和分析这些过去的知识网络。新的可视化方法将与现有技术相结合，以创建可访问的功能工具，用于社会科学和人文学者正在进行的文学共和国研究中的直接整合和应用。该项目将有助于计算机科学，社会科学和人文科学。对计算机科学的贡献包括支持开放式数据探索和分析方法的数据可视化和交互技术。对社会科学和人文科学的贡献将包括通过从信件，出版物和旅行记录中收集的经验数据的探索，结合地理学家，历史学家和文学学者的解释专业知识来阐明文学共和国。

The "Republic of Letters" - a term used between ca. 1500-1800 to describe scholarly communities and networks of knowledge - has been described as a lost continent, a country without borders. Enmeshed in trading, diplomatic, and missionary networks, it emerged in the early decades of the printing press, came to full fruition in the era which created learned societies and scholarly journals, and declined when the full-scale professionalization of scholarly life and the rise of the modern nation-state made this transnational scholarly utopia a dream of the past. Organized around individuals, institutions, and projects, the Republic of Letters was the primary means by which knowledge traveled in this earlier era. While its origins were British and European, the Republic of Letters traveled where Europeans traveled, colonized, and settled, including the colonial Americas. The Republic of Letters expresses a wide range of correlations over time and space such that, on a large scale, it can be viewed as a loose affiliation of individuals based on principles, methods of communication, and philosophical ideals over a period spanning hundreds of years. At the other extreme, it is expressed in closely affiliated clusters of individuals sharing ideas either directly in correspondence, in salons, or indirectly through publications and via intermediaries. In every case, there are many conditions and constraints influencing network processes including language, location, social circles, political events, intrigue, religious affiliation, and gender. Much of this data has been captured and will allow us to map the physical and virtual topology of the network. Combining the implications of geographic data, historical events, and social data, this is an excellent case study for how the spread of ideas at the global scale relates to the dynamical processes that operate at the local scale. Dr. Christopher Weaver and colleagues will create techniques to visualize and analyze multi-dimensional, multi-scale, and uncertain heterogeneous data extracted from historical text documents. Further, they will develop interactive designs that enable individual and collaborating scholars to dissect, revisit, share, explore, and analyze these past networks of knowledge. The new visualization methods will be combined with existing techniques to create accessible and functional tools for direct integration in and application to the ongoing study of the Republic of Letters by social science and humanities scholars. This project will contribute to computer science, social sciences, and the humanities. The contributions to computer science include data visualization and interaction techniques in support of open-ended data exploration and analysis methodologies. The contributions to the social sciences and humanities will include elucidation of the Republic of Letters through an exploration of empirical data gleaned from correspondences, publications, and travel records, combined with the interpretive expertise of geographers, historians, and literary scholars.