Modeling Changing Scientific Concepts with Complex Networks: A Case Study on the Chemical Revolution
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Auteurs principaux: | , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
| Publié: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866912972656345088 |
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| author | Aguilar-Valdez, Sofía Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania |
| author_facet | Aguilar-Valdez, Sofía Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania |
| contents | While context embeddings produced by LLMs can be used to estimate conceptual change, these representations are often not interpretable nor time-aware. Moreover, bias augmentation in historical data poses a non-trivial risk to researchers in the Digital Humanities. Hence, to model reliable concept trajectories in evolving scholarship, in this work we develop a framework that represents prototypical concepts through complex networks based on topics. Utilizing the Royal Society Corpus, we analyzed two competing theories from the Chemical Revolution (phlogiston vs. oxygen) as a case study to show that onomasiological change is linked to higher entropy and topological density, indicating increased diversity of ideas and connectivity effort. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_17594 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Modeling Changing Scientific Concepts with Complex Networks: A Case Study on the Chemical Revolution Aguilar-Valdez, Sofía Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania Physics and Society Computation and Language I.2.7; J.4; J.5 While context embeddings produced by LLMs can be used to estimate conceptual change, these representations are often not interpretable nor time-aware. Moreover, bias augmentation in historical data poses a non-trivial risk to researchers in the Digital Humanities. Hence, to model reliable concept trajectories in evolving scholarship, in this work we develop a framework that represents prototypical concepts through complex networks based on topics. Utilizing the Royal Society Corpus, we analyzed two competing theories from the Chemical Revolution (phlogiston vs. oxygen) as a case study to show that onomasiological change is linked to higher entropy and topological density, indicating increased diversity of ideas and connectivity effort. |
| title | Modeling Changing Scientific Concepts with Complex Networks: A Case Study on the Chemical Revolution |
| topic | Physics and Society Computation and Language I.2.7; J.4; J.5 |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.17594 |