'Men wilde modern zijn, geen atheïst'. Een topic-modellinganalyse van natuurwetenschappen en theologie in honderd jaar De Gids.

Abstract

In the nineteenth century, new developments in the natural sciences found a place in the academic landscape, either affecting existing disciplines in that landscape, or causing a shift by introducing new disciplines. One of the results of this introduction of new fields of research is exemplified in the discourse around modern theology, which is also visible in the Dutch general cultural periodical De Gids (1837-). This article sheds new light on how this introduction of the natural sciences took place, as can be seen in contributions to De Gids. It does this by using topic modelling, a technique well known in the Digital Humanities, to give an overview of the attention paid to several disciplines in the magazine over time. In particular, this article focuses on the proportion of contributions from theology and philosophy, and relates changes in the attention paid to these disciplines to the discourse around modern theology. In addition, the article shows how the technique of topicmodelling can assist scholars in their research and shows how findings from digital methods can complement existing studies on De Gids in particular and cultural historical research on large textual corpora in general.

Publication
Naar het onbekende. Perspectieven op literatuur, cultuur en kennis. 2019