Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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History without chronology…. Good luck………
If one were to think about it in the most lamest of illustrations, history without chronology would resemble a pot-luck stew. There would be no way of telling what was in there, nor in what order the individual components should be eaten to avoid, quite bluntly, food poisoning. This is why chronology is so important; it gives…
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The Benefits of Time Maps
Chronology is very important when studying history, as events must be placed in historical context for us to fully grasp an understanding of what occurred. Chronology helps us to understand why historical events occur, for example what led up to the beginning of a war. Grafton first points out the early significance of chronology, stating…
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TimeGlider vs. TimeMapper: Battle to the Death
There are many different options for where to put a list of chronological events. It makes more sense to use a time line than anything else. TimeGlider works unbelievably well when there are many dates and times to include per post. With TimeGlider, one can edit the posts to highlight themes to differentiate them from…
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Contextual Research Assignment and Blog Post #3
Thinking about how we represent history has been a question that has occupied us for millennia. Why does chronology of events matter? What can it show? How can we represent history? In his Introduction, Grafton observes that “Teachers and theorists claimed, over and over again, that chronology and geography were the two eyes of history:…
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Contextual Research
Contextual Research, or, Meanwhile, in the rest of the 1740s In this next section of the course, we will be thinking about how to map time. As a help, read Anthony Grafton’s Introduction to Cartographies of Time (Princeton,2009). Assignment Objective: Contextualize the experience of the Moravian missionaries in the 1740s within a broader historical landscape that…
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Distant reading or missed-it reading?
The concept of distant reading is seen as the “improper way” to read a text, according to many scholars of literature. Essentially, distant ready is a way to encompass and learn from many texts without closely reading them. Of course there is the practical reason for distant reading; it takes considerably less time and can…
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On Distant Reading – Blog Post # 2
In the Powell diaries, it is important to acknowledge historical perspective and context in order to fully grasp the situation. In this case, the person describing the event was often involved in it. For example, on January 10, the author describes how they, “Visited Shikellame, being Snoe Weather Could not well go further, invited him…
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Distant Reading: Understanding and Comprehending
Distant reading is a tool that is becoming more popular, as well as more fascinating and more advanced. As Edward Whitley says, “…the virtue of information visualization is that it can make complex data sets more accessible than they might otherwise be…” (188). Distant readings allow us to draw comparisons between different words and events…
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Distant Reading Can Give the Reader an Overview of the Subject Matter
Distant reading is not reading from far away, but rather reading the themes of a work. The difference between reading an article and getting the distant reading of an article is similar to looking through a microscope versus a telescope. A microscope gets the details and exact information of a document, while a telescope gives…
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The Benefits of Distant Reading
Distant Reading is a process where digital documents are broken down and used to make visual images and graphs of patterns of the text that are found in these documents. According to Whitley with the use of digital technology scholars have been able to “search for patterns and trace broad outlines, in a single text…
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