Mapping the networked context of Copernicus, Michelangelo, and della Mirandola in wikipedia

To discern the role social and cultural networks play in the emergence of preeminent historical figures and ideas in History, we use a method based on complex networks analysis to reveal emergent interactions in Wikipedia. We built a network constituted by derivative links, where nodes are connected if they are co-linked by other papers or co-link other papers within Wikipedia. We apply this method, focused on the structural distance, to three significant individuals associated with the Italian Renaissance: Copernicus, Michelangelo, and Pico della Mirandola. The results point to the effectiveness of this approach for discovering new knowledge about the interdisciplinary transactions between people and ideas coming from artistic, scientific and philosophical domains during this period. The emergent network reflects the apparently strong network-level interactions between Michelangelo and Mirandola’s clusters; the importance of Hermeticism across the three clusters; and how the so-called “knowledge dealers” related to Neoplatonism contribute to the depiction of the period by future historians. Finally, we advance the notion of “focus reading”, in which complex networks analysis allows us to build bridges between close and distant forms of reading historical evidence.