FHNR · Charting the process of getting forgotten within the humanities, 18th – 20th centuries: a historical network research analysis
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2018-10-01 → 2019-09-30
- EU contribution
- €88,799
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF-EF-ST
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Results in brief
Charting the process of getting forgotten within the humanities, 18th – 20th centuries: a historical network research analysis
Why do scholars get forgotten? To fade out of remembrance is the posthumous fate of the overwhelming majority of scholars. But understanding forgetting is as important as understanding why something is appreciated. Both are necessary to understand the formation and sustainability of the canon within any academic field. The aim of the project was to provide the basis to do so by focusing on four exemplary cases. These four scholars selected as my protagonists were Johannes Braun (1628–1708), Thomas Gale (1636–1702), Adriaan Reland (1676–1718), and Eusèbe Renaudot (1646–1720). The basic assumptions put to the test were: 1. ‘Structural remembrance’ is the sum of individual, consciously crafted acts of referring to a predecessor. ‘Structural forgetting’ is thus a function of such acts of reference ceasing over time. As both are constituted through delineable individual actions, their patterns may be observed and recovered. 2. ‘Being forgotten’ in a structural way therefore is defined as a pattern of being only intermittently referred to over a longer period of time. Such patterns were found and could meaningfully be analysed in the project, suggesting the basic assumptions to be sound. Analyses of ‘structural forgetting’ governed by these assumptions are necessary specific to the featured scholars’ respective intellectual contexts and disciplinary frameworks. This lead to three consecutive goals: 1. Charting the process of getting forgotten within science and learning without any qualifications: to understand how becoming forgotten works. 2. Determining the dominant factors for each respective scholar: to understand why forgotten scholars were and are referenced the way they are. 3. Developing a theoretical model of how scholars got forgotten as basis for a general theory of getting forgotten in science and learning.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
How did scholars get forgotten between the early 18th and the 20th century? To solve this question, the references to four humanities scholars (Dutch, English, French, and German) who worked on related fields, occupied similar posts, died in the first half of the 18th century and are little known today are to be tracked and compared by using historical network analysis (HNR) based on the tool NodeGoat. The sample of scholars is composed of Adrien Reland (1676-1718), Professor of Oriental Languages and Biblical Antiquities at Utrecht University; Johannes Braun (1628-1702), Professor of Theology at Groningen University; Thomas Gale (1636-1702), Professor of Greek at Cambridge University; and Eusebè Renaudot (1646-1720), Member of the Academie Française and the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. References to them from an academic background are to be tracking during their lifetime as well as posthumously and to be entered in a structured NodeGoat database for HNR analysis. These references include quotations and citations as well as being explicitly mentioned in letters and in print, where print encompasses both journals and books. They are to be collected by search within digitized corpora as well as in library holdings and archival materials. The HNR analysis will then reveal patterns of reference and point to clusters where specific in-depth archival researches have to be carried out.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- KONINKLIJKE NEDERLANDSE AKADEMIE VAN WETENSCHAPPEN - KNAW · AMSTERDAMCoordinatorNetherlands
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union