Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Timelines
Chronology is the science of arranging events in their order of occurrence in time. It is really important to us because it determines the actual temporal sequence of past events. While historical texts have been subject to critical analysis, we ignored the formal and historical problems posed by graphic representations of time, the most important…
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Blog #3 Timelines
Thinking about how we represent history has been a question that has occupied us for millennia. Why does chronology of events matter? What can it show? How can we represent history? In his Introduction, Grafton observes that “Teachers and theorists claimed, over and over again, that chronology and geography were the two eyes of history:…
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Distant Reading
During the process of learning about Distant Reading last week, I found it quite interesting to capture the beauty of Distant Reading. Distant Reading, as Whitley mentioned in her writing, is not to take the place of traditional close reading, but to give readers a broader view of the whole documents in a quantitative other…
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On Distant Reading
Humanists always spend too much time on exploring useful information from tremendous humanity database. The theme of the book, the intentions of authors and the subtle evidence of the contemporary lives, culture and thoughts are all hidden in hundreds of pages, or even more, of humanity materials. However, nowadays, humanity exploration no longer consumes as…
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On Distant Reading
The picture to the left may look like a children’s drawing to most people, but in reality it is an analysis of the frequency of five different words in a document. Every time the word shows up in the document, the assigned, colored line takes a turn at a specified angle. This is a clever…
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Distant Reading: Plural Pronouns Reflect Collectivist Society
Distant reading of texts can help readers understand overall themes, concepts, and cultural context. For this reason, distant reading can help to answer the following question: Were the Moravians in the 18th century a collectivist or individualist society? Some distant reading strategies will better display this orientation in society than others, however the theme remains sound. In…
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On Distant Reading
In the past, people tended to value close reading over the broad brushstrokes of information visualization. However, the subtlety of word choice and the nuance of phrasing reveal that apparently straightforward texts are more complicated. Then, a number of scholars have cited Franco Moretti’s concept of “distant reading”. Distant reading means understanding literature not by…
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On Material and Digital Archives
Digital artifacts from archival documents really benefit scholars a lot. By making digital artifacts, tremendous data are carefully categorized, which enables people to find the data they need by simply searching the key word instead of picking up the data from libraries that contain tons of data. For example, in Lincoln at 200, facts about…
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On Material and Digital Archives: Old Info, New Medium.
Digitizing archival material comes with advantages and disadvantages; creating a large responsibility for the archivist. Digitally cataloging historical information makes the material accessible. For example prior to the travel journals being published online, the only way one could read them would be by reading the actual journal. Now the contents are available online, so the information can be…
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On Material and Digital Archives
Digital artifacts created from archival documents provide advantages such as preservability, portability, and easy organization and accessibility. Digital artifacts won’t wear down from being analyzed by people because it is just digital image. The physical artifact may get damaged from being handled by many people. Digital artifacts do not take a long time to find. In online…
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