Conway in n Dimensions Using Semantic Similarity to Trace Potential Influence

Abstract

The history of ideas has been steadily importing methods from the digital humanities in recent years. In particular, the (changing) meaning of words (as helpful portals to the discovery of ideas), has been modelled computationally by a number of researchers (de Bolla 2013; Betti and van den Berg 2014; Brezina et al. 2015; van Eijnatten, 2019; Longhi 2020; Hogenbirk and Mol 2022; Valleriani et al. 2022). Within semantic modelling, the most prevalent application is the tracing of meaning shift over time (Hamilton et al. 2016; de Bolla et al. 2019; Gavin et al. 2019; Wevers and Koolen 2020). Large corpora are investigated to see how and if the same word gets different associations over time. In this paper I also make use of semantic models of terms, but I use them not for the analysis of large corpora, but for the investigation of a singular work of philosophy: Anne Conway's (1631-1679) Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (hereafter The Principles). The paper sets up a pipeline for investigating a singular work computationall by arguing for an interpretation of the semantic similarity of two works; if two works are semantically similar, and one is prior to the other, then the earlier work is a likely candidate for being a (semantic) influence on the later work. Conway is a useful case due to the troubled history of her (scarce) works. I will argue that according to the computational outcomes René Descartes (1596-1650) and mechanicism are, despite the doctrinal disagreements Conway herself notes with Descartes, the most central sources for Conway's work.