|Talks|

A Shared Foundation for Network Science and Cultural History

Visiting speaker
Past Talk
Maximilian Schich
Associate Professor, UT Dallas
Dec 9, 2019
3:00 pm
Dec 9, 2019
3:00 pm
In-person
4 Thomas More St
London E1W 1YW, UK
The Roux Institute
Room
100 Fore Street
Portland, ME 04101
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Network Science Institute
11th floor
177 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115
Network Science Institute
2nd floor
Room
58 St Katharine's Way
London E1W 1LP, UK

Talk recording

Intellectual accomplishment is increasingly subject to quantification, giving rise to a Science of Science that deepens our understanding beyond more simple measures of impact and too narrow forms of anecdotalism. Yet, while groundbreaking, the current multidisciplinary practice is still limited by the nature of data under investigation. As we typically quantify incomplete surrogates, such as citation enriched with topic meta-data, the tension between quantification and more qualitative interpretation still remains, even if both modes of inquiry have rigor. In this talk, I will break some tear-lines of citation to reveal a shared foundation with the potential to reconcile complex network science, higher-order topology, computation, and more surprisingly some central methods of cultural history. Rooted in Leibniz, the tragic bifurcation of these disciplines emerged due to the branching evolution of disciplinary focus, due to changes in language, and due to sometimes forced scholarly migration. Overcoming such obstacles in a systematic way, this talk will exemplify that it is worthwhile to go beyond citation data or other convenient yet incomplete surrogates. At the same time the chosen example itself will clarify that the ongoing tension between quantification and qualitative inquiry can be mitigated via a shared "most general symbolic reference framework" that is able to bridge the natural sciences and the humanities. In short: This talk will use qualitative inquiry to go beyond the quantification of a science of science, to convince the audience that an integration of quantification and qualitative inquiry is indeed possible and beneficial within a systematic science of cultural interaction, much like in systems biology.

About the speaker
Maximilian Schich is an Associate Professor in Arts & Technology and founding member of the Edith O’Donnell Institute of Art History at the University of Texas at Dallas. His formation includes a PhD in Art History, a substantial post-doc phase in Complex Network Science, and what is now called Computational Social Science. He is the first author of A Network Framework of Cultural History in Science Magazine and a lead co-author of the Nature video animation Charting Culture, both together receiving global press coverage in 28 languages. Currently, Max works to outline a systematic science of cultural interaction in a forthcoming book.
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Dec 09, 2019