Laura Duparc: "Explicit and implicit references in Wittgenstein: A proof of concept for a crowdsourcing and visualisation tool in the history of philosophy", 8 October 2022.
This presentation was a part of the 7th Symposium of the International Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, "70 Years of Editing Wittgenstein. History, Challenges and Possibilities", co-organised by the Ludwig Wittgenstein Project, hosted by the University of Milan, 7-8 October 2022.
Abstract:
I will present a work in progress website that aims to create a digital tool to visualize the links between philosophical texts, in particular, the explicit and implicit references that a philosophical work makes to previous works. The project involves a team of engineers on the one hand, and on the other hand teachers and researchers in philosophy, specializing in an author or a work, who identify, in each text, the implicit and explicit references to other works, and justify their choice. It is a collaborative project: for each reference identified by a contributor, it will be possible for other specialists to open a discussion to comment on the reference, add new elements to confirm the connection, or debate around the identified reference in case of disagreement on the link. The discussion aims at generating community criteria for establishing different degrees of connectedness between texts. The final product will offer students and researchers a unique visualization of the history of philosophy in the form of a “Great Conversation”, an aid to the study of the most difficult texts, and will allow for the valorization of the work of historians of philosophy. The proof of concept is on the Philosophical Investigations by Ludwig Wittgenstein.