Abstract
For the ‘Tools of Knowledge’ digital history research project a suite of explorable and configurable data graphics are designed and in development. This generalizable tool enables visual investigation of a highly detailed knowledge graph (SEMSIM) that represents the communities of scientific instrument makers in Britain, 1550-1914, with a specific aim of discovering ‘identity’, as variously conceived. A key area of innovation is in the tool’s handing of time, and the grammar of animated transitions used to communicate the chronological sequencing of events in the network.
By reworking and enhancing a legacy database which has been a significant source for historians of science over the last thirty years, SEMSIM semantically models the communities of artisans - and latterly the companies - involved in the production of a wide range of scientific apparatus. The dataset includes the geocoded places with which they were associated, the instruments they advertised as making and are known to have made, the variety of their relationships with organisations (partnerships, business appointments, and guilds toles, from apprenticeship to master status), as well as their personal and professional relationships. Dates are modelled with degrees and kinds of confidence and indeterminacy, and additional evidence is adduced from a wide range of museum collections data concerning the objects they produced.
The design of the tool enables a highly nuanced and comparative analysis of change in complex networks of heterogeneous relations, in time, foregrounding hypothesis building through ‘data tuning’ and the principle of the ‘subject in transit’ to focalise attention across layouts. Two graphical layouts, designed to address the specific needs of the data model while conceived for more generalized application to historical research and beyond, can now be presented in interactive, data-driven, applying principles of
The first adapts a multi-column alluvial layout to interrogate the collective and individual ‘identity’ of makers. Each new column imposes an additive filter-by-type which cumulatively channels the characteristics of makers to generate a ‘signature’ flow line. The manipulable graphic provides a highly legible view of the knowledge graph: one which fluidly animates as adjustments are made, whether to a variety of settings, or via a brushable and variably bracketed timeline, or through direct interaction with alluvial bars and flows. Individual strands of these flows can be identified and isolated, with the graphical presentation re- focalised on these, but with the underlying data always immediately accessible.
The second novel layout addresses the diverse social and professional relationships that shaped these communities, offering into genealogies of inherited knowledge and commercial interest. The concern here again is, at least in part, with ‘identity’, though here more with the idea of the ‘business’ or ‘ongoing concern’ than the individual person, and the supra-generational time. This allows identification of the golden threads of association, for example, whose longevity may span almost the entire period of four centuries; or elucidate the characteristics of success for a particular specialism in one historical moment
By reworking and enhancing a legacy database which has been a significant source for historians of science over the last thirty years, SEMSIM semantically models the communities of artisans - and latterly the companies - involved in the production of a wide range of scientific apparatus. The dataset includes the geocoded places with which they were associated, the instruments they advertised as making and are known to have made, the variety of their relationships with organisations (partnerships, business appointments, and guilds toles, from apprenticeship to master status), as well as their personal and professional relationships. Dates are modelled with degrees and kinds of confidence and indeterminacy, and additional evidence is adduced from a wide range of museum collections data concerning the objects they produced.
The design of the tool enables a highly nuanced and comparative analysis of change in complex networks of heterogeneous relations, in time, foregrounding hypothesis building through ‘data tuning’ and the principle of the ‘subject in transit’ to focalise attention across layouts. Two graphical layouts, designed to address the specific needs of the data model while conceived for more generalized application to historical research and beyond, can now be presented in interactive, data-driven, applying principles of
The first adapts a multi-column alluvial layout to interrogate the collective and individual ‘identity’ of makers. Each new column imposes an additive filter-by-type which cumulatively channels the characteristics of makers to generate a ‘signature’ flow line. The manipulable graphic provides a highly legible view of the knowledge graph: one which fluidly animates as adjustments are made, whether to a variety of settings, or via a brushable and variably bracketed timeline, or through direct interaction with alluvial bars and flows. Individual strands of these flows can be identified and isolated, with the graphical presentation re- focalised on these, but with the underlying data always immediately accessible.
The second novel layout addresses the diverse social and professional relationships that shaped these communities, offering into genealogies of inherited knowledge and commercial interest. The concern here again is, at least in part, with ‘identity’, though here more with the idea of the ‘business’ or ‘ongoing concern’ than the individual person, and the supra-generational time. This allows identification of the golden threads of association, for example, whose longevity may span almost the entire period of four centuries; or elucidate the characteristics of success for a particular specialism in one historical moment
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages | 1-1 |
| Number of pages | 1 |
| Publication status | Unpublished - 20 Jul 2023 |
| Event | GrapHNR 2023: Graphs and Networks in the fourth dimension – time and temporality as categories of connectedness - Academy of Sciences and Literature, Mainz and the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz, Germany Duration: 18 Jul 2023 → 21 Jul 2023 https://graphentechnologien.hypotheses.org/tagungen/graphentechnologien-2023 |
Conference
| Conference | GrapHNR 2023 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | Germany |
| City | Mainz |
| Period | 18/07/23 → 21/07/23 |
| Internet address |