Abstract
We investigated the evolution and transformation of scientific knowledge in the early modern period, analyzing more than 350 different editions of textbooks used for teaching astronomy in European universities from the late fifteenth century to mid-seventeenth century. These historical sources constitute the Sphaera Corpus. By examining different semantic relations among individual parts of each edition on record, we built a multiplex network consisting of six layers, as well as the aggregated network built from the superposition of all the layers. The network analysis reveals the emergence of five different communities. The contribution of each layer in shaping the communities and the properties of each community are studied. The most influential books in the corpus are found by calculating the average age of all the out-going and in-coming links for each book. A small group of editions is identified as a transmitter of knowledge as they bridge past knowledge to the future through a long temporal interval. Our analysis, moreover, identifies the most impactful editions. These books introduce new knowledge that is then adopted by almost all the books published afterwards until the end of the whole period of study. The historical research on the content of the identified books, as an empirical test, finally corroborates the results of all our analyses.
Highlights
We investigated the evolution and transformation of scientific knowledge in the early modern period, analyzing more than 350 different editions of textbooks used for teaching astronomy in European universities from the late fifteenth century to mid-seventeenth century
How does scientific knowledge e volve1–5? How did it evolve in the past, for instance, during a specific period of time? How does knowledge transform? Which epistemic mechanisms make knowledge homogenous and standardized and which causes it to differentiate and diverge6–8? And how are these transformations intertwined with the process of transmission and preservation of knowledge over time9–11? These relevant and fascinating questions can be approached by means of network study as it provides efficient and appropriate investigative tools[12,13,14]
The aim of this paper is to investigate the process of development of scientific knowledge in the early modern period, a time in which scholars did not cite each other in the same way as in the current epoch
Summary
We investigated the evolution and transformation of scientific knowledge in the early modern period, analyzing more than 350 different editions of textbooks used for teaching astronomy in European universities from the late fifteenth century to mid-seventeenth century These historical sources constitute the Sphaera Corpus. We further argued that these developing trends reflect a process of hegemony by a small group of book producers that explains the overall tendency of homogenization of scientific knowledge as taught at European universities during the early modern period This latest study will further corroborate our earlier hypothesis, but it will expand our previous understanding by considering different historical sources more closely that will allow us to determine mechanisms of the evolution of knowledge
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