eAQUA/Mental Maps: Exploring Concept Change in Time and Space

Dr. Roxana Kath

Within the joint research project eAQUA (http://www.eaqua.net/index.php), computer scientists and classicists developed a research frontend that allows an interactive analysis of the transfer and transformation of concepts in time and space. As a result of the work of the subproject “Mental Maps”, the Web Frontend shows the positive benefits of interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and computer sciences. The visualization opens up a new approach to the history of political thought in Antiquity.

Currently the tool allows to compare up to four different forms of words or phrases of ancient Greek literature. The hits occur in their spatial (map) and chronological (timeline) distribution and in a table format. For semantic analyses, the sources or groups of sources can be visualized as a cooccurrence graph. For the analysis of concept change and transfer, relations between coordinates are displayed in the map as connection lines and their changes in time can be monitored. This enables to evaluate the regional distribution of words, word forms and concepts. The new methods can be adapted by other humanities and social sciences for instance to analyze political, social or cultural discourses. After integrating additional corpora and associated metadata, the Mental Maps could be used for any kind of analysis of transfer and reception processes in philosophy, literature or even art, as well.

This Paper explores the possibilities of this new research tool on the eAQUA platform. It explains the different objects and functions of the Web Frontend and shows how to use them. Giving selected examples from the field of ancient political ideas it shows the analysis of stable and volatile concepts and discusses their scientific value. The following questions are addressed: What role(s) had a concept in its beginning? Was it controversial discussed? When and under what circumstances did a concept prevail? Which authors did promote a concept at a given period of time? What are the characteristics of stable and volatile concepts?