Quantifying the Science-Humanities Gap

Project Summary

Spenser Easterbrook, a Philosophy and Math double major, joined Biology majors Aharon Walker and Nicholas Branson in a ten-week exploration of the connections between journal publications from the humanities and the sciences. They were guided by Rick Gawne and Jameson Clarke, graduate students from Philosophy and Biology.

Themes and Categories
Interdisciplinary Inquiry
Computational Humanities, Data+
Year
2015
Contact
Paul Bendich
mathematics
bendich@math.duke.edu

Project Results

The team painstakingly created citation networks for several major philosophy journals and then analyzed the network structure using Gephi. Among other analyses, they found that a small fraction of the philosophy papers in this network were responsible for most of the citations to science journals. They presented their findings to the Moral Attitudes and Decision-Making Lab, and the dataset they created will be used next fall in an undergraduate philosophy class, funded under iiD's Data Expeditions program.

Aharon presenting at the Moral Atittudes and Decision-Making Lab

Download the executive summary (PPTX).

Disciplines Involved

  • Philosophy
  • Network Analysis

Project Team

Undergraduates: Nicholas Branson, Aharon Walker, and Spenser Easterbrook

Project Mentors:

  • Jameson Clarke, Ph.D. Candidate, Biology
  • Rick Gawne, Ph.D. Candidate, Center for the Philosophy of Biology

 

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