Welcome back to “Beyond the Patterns”! Today, we have the pleasure of introducing a friend and colleague from the University of Antwerp, Mike Kestemont. As a research associate professor, Mike specializes in computational text analysis for the computational humanities. His work focuses on historic literature, covering classical, medieval, early modern, and modernist texts. Mike’s presentation, titled “Ecology and Cultural Heritage: Modeling the Historic Survival of Books,” sheds light on the application of ecological methods in the study of cultural heritage.
Contents
The Challenge of Lost Literature
The survival of historic literature is a crucial concern in the field of humanities, as a significant amount of material artifacts have been lost over time. This loss can be attributed to various factors, including accidents like fires or intentional actions such as book disposal. The result is an incomplete and potentially biased sample of the original population of historic literature.
Bridging the Gap Between Ecology and Culture
Mike’s research aims to bridge the gap between the study of biological ecosystems and cultural heritage by utilizing digital and computational methods. By employing methods from ecology, Mike and his team explore the historic survival of books and authors in the realm of medieval literature. They propose treating literary works as living creatures that are part of a larger ecosystem.
Unseen Species Models
In their study, Mike and his team utilize the “cha-1” unseen species model, developed by a Taiwanese biostatistician. This model estimates the number of unseen species based on abundance data. They apply this model to estimate the number of lost works in medieval Dutch literature.
Results and Future Work
Through their application of the unseen species model, Mike and his team estimate that originally, there were over 150 chivalric romances in middle Dutch literature, of which only half have survived. They also find that the survival rate of documents, or manuscripts, varies across different medieval literatures. For instance, the survival rate for Icelandic and Irish literature is relatively higher compared to Middle English literature.
Implications and Research Agenda
These findings have significant implications for the understanding of lost literature and the biases that exist in the survival of books and manuscripts. Mike and his team are working towards developing more comprehensive models that account for collection biases and other medieval factors that affect the survival of literature.
In conclusion, Mike’s research highlights the importance of understanding the historic survival of books and authors and the potential for interdisciplinary collaboration between ecology and culture. By utilizing computational methods and statistical models, researchers can gain insights into the diversity and loss of cultural artifacts over time.
Would you like to learn more? Check out the Techal website for more articles and insights into the ever-evolving world of technology.
