Semantic Networks: A Tool for Investigating Conceptual Change and Knowledge Transfer in the History of Science
Everyone's Keywords: semantic networks;
Abstract: Over the past four decades, historians of science have devoted much attention to certain
problematic aspects of terms such as mass and force. The usage and sense of such terms varies
between theories, and the meaning of such terms resists explication in language belonging to a
different theoretical context. In what follows, we shall consider these phenomena — not in the
light of philosophy or psychology — but from a linguistic perspective. In this paper, we suggest
that semantic networks serve as a useful model for understanding the terminology of scientific
texts, and we introduce some computational methods that may be of value for the study of
conceptual change in the history of science. We then consider: the nature of relations that exist
between nodes in a network; the ability of lexicalizations to serve as proxies for concepts; and
the application of semantic network analysis to the study of a diachronically extended corpus
of texts intended for investigating long-term developments in the history of mechanics. It is our
hope that the approaches outlined here may contribute to an understanding of the conceptual
structure of mechanical knowledge and its transformations.
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