@inproceedings{aguilar-valdez-degaetano-ortlieb-2026-modeling-changing,
title = "Modeling Changing Scientific Concepts with Complex Networks: A Case Study on the Chemical Revolution",
author = "Aguilar Valdez, Sofia and
Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania",
editor = "Alves, Diego and
Bizzoni, Yuri and
Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania and
Kazantseva, Anna and
Pagel, Janis and
Szpakowicz, Stan",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 10th Joint {SIGHUM} Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature 2026",
month = mar,
year = "2026",
address = "Rabat, Morocco",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.latechclfl-1.14/",
pages = "146--156",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-373-9",
abstract = "While context embeddings produced by LLMs can be used to estimate conceptual change, these representations are often not interpretable nor time-aware. Moreover, bias augmentation in historical data poses a non-trivial risk to researchers in the Digital Humanities. Hence, to model reliable concept trajectories in evolving scholarship, in this work we develop a framework that represents prototypical concepts through complex networks based on topics. Utilizing the Royal Society Corpus, we analyzed two competing theories from the Chemical Revolution (phlogiston vs. oxygen) as a case study to show that onomasiological change is linked to higher entropy and topological density, indicating increased diversity of ideas and connectivity effort."
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Modeling Changing Scientific Concepts with Complex Networks: A Case Study on the Chemical Revolution
%A Aguilar Valdez, Sofia
%A Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania
%Y Alves, Diego
%Y Bizzoni, Yuri
%Y Degaetano-Ortlieb, Stefania
%Y Kazantseva, Anna
%Y Pagel, Janis
%Y Szpakowicz, Stan
%S Proceedings of the 10th Joint SIGHUM Workshop on Computational Linguistics for Cultural Heritage, Social Sciences, Humanities and Literature 2026
%D 2026
%8 March
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Rabat, Morocco
%@ 979-8-89176-373-9
%F aguilar-valdez-degaetano-ortlieb-2026-modeling-changing
%X While context embeddings produced by LLMs can be used to estimate conceptual change, these representations are often not interpretable nor time-aware. Moreover, bias augmentation in historical data poses a non-trivial risk to researchers in the Digital Humanities. Hence, to model reliable concept trajectories in evolving scholarship, in this work we develop a framework that represents prototypical concepts through complex networks based on topics. Utilizing the Royal Society Corpus, we analyzed two competing theories from the Chemical Revolution (phlogiston vs. oxygen) as a case study to show that onomasiological change is linked to higher entropy and topological density, indicating increased diversity of ideas and connectivity effort.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.latechclfl-1.14/
%P 146-156
Markdown (Informal)
[Modeling Changing Scientific Concepts with Complex Networks: A Case Study on the Chemical Revolution](https://aclanthology.org/2026.latechclfl-1.14/) (Aguilar Valdez & Degaetano-Ortlieb, LaTeCH-CLfL 2026)
ACL