Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and Correspondence

This essay focuses on a digital text analysis with AntConc computational linguistics tool in order to find, list and compare the most important key word occurrences and their collocations in some of Christiaan Huygens last writings, from 1686 to 1695 and posthumous. The greatest attention is payed t...

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Main Author: Ludovica Marinucci
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Firenze University Press 2018-05-01
Series:JLIS.it
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Online Access:https://jlis.fupress.net/index.php/jlis/article/view/393
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author Ludovica Marinucci
author_facet Ludovica Marinucci
author_sort Ludovica Marinucci
collection DOAJ
description This essay focuses on a digital text analysis with AntConc computational linguistics tool in order to find, list and compare the most important key word occurrences and their collocations in some of Christiaan Huygens last writings, from 1686 to 1695 and posthumous. The greatest attention is payed to three key words – Animus, Potentia and Lex – related to the themes of  God’s power, divine and human intelligence, probabilistic epistemology, natural theology and plurality of worlds.  In addition, these key words are used to select the letters written by Huygens to the most important of his contemporaries on the same topics. This challenge firstly involves demonstrating that his last writings on philosophical and theological reflections on mechanistic philosophy are not an anomaly within Huygens’ wider work, and secondly showing that these are indications of Huygens’ involvement in a number of theoretical debates in the second half of the seventeenth century.
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spelling doaj.art-0add8435aba346bdba97864e2bf91e472023-08-22T16:28:58ZengFirenze University PressJLIS.it2038-10262018-05-0192Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and CorrespondenceLudovica Marinucci0University of Cagliari, Department of Philosophy, ItalyThis essay focuses on a digital text analysis with AntConc computational linguistics tool in order to find, list and compare the most important key word occurrences and their collocations in some of Christiaan Huygens last writings, from 1686 to 1695 and posthumous. The greatest attention is payed to three key words – Animus, Potentia and Lex – related to the themes of  God’s power, divine and human intelligence, probabilistic epistemology, natural theology and plurality of worlds.  In addition, these key words are used to select the letters written by Huygens to the most important of his contemporaries on the same topics. This challenge firstly involves demonstrating that his last writings on philosophical and theological reflections on mechanistic philosophy are not an anomaly within Huygens’ wider work, and secondly showing that these are indications of Huygens’ involvement in a number of theoretical debates in the second half of the seventeenth century.https://jlis.fupress.net/index.php/jlis/article/view/393History of science; Christiaan Huygens; Digital text analysis; Lexicon; AntConc corpus analysis tool
spellingShingle Ludovica Marinucci
Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and Correspondence
JLIS.it
History of science; Christiaan Huygens; Digital text analysis; Lexicon; AntConc corpus analysis tool
title Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and Correspondence
title_full Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and Correspondence
title_fullStr Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and Correspondence
title_full_unstemmed Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and Correspondence
title_short Language as Scientific Instrument: a Preliminary Digital Analysis of Christiaan Huygens' Last Writings and Correspondence
title_sort language as scientific instrument a preliminary digital analysis of christiaan huygens last writings and correspondence
topic History of science; Christiaan Huygens; Digital text analysis; Lexicon; AntConc corpus analysis tool
url https://jlis.fupress.net/index.php/jlis/article/view/393
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