A Gala of Google Ngrams (updated)

OK, so I have been working on a couple essays about modernism, but as usual I got distracted.  The Google ngrams  (here too) caught my attention this week so I had to play with them.  Here are some of the cultural periods I have been discussing based on word searches [1].  Remember, these charts reflect how popular certain words were during the selected time frame. Click on a chart to get a bigger image.

Update 01/08/11: I redid all the charts using the word eat as a base line.  Also, I added a few more charts so the gala is now more a gaggle.

In the 17^th century “age of faith” people liked the words faith, love, and heart. Certainly, a passionate era.

 

 

The 17th century was a soulful era too.  The 18th was not.

Was the 18^th century an “age of reason"? Apparently not. But they liked thought.  Reason was popular before and after the 18^th century.  I guess that spike in the very late 18th century has to do with somebody writing a book called "the age of reason".

The discussion of the Enlightenment started circa 1825. The study of romanticism began in the late 19th century and then died down. Neither seem that important compared to the basic idea of eating.

Modernity and post modern are both, well, modern and post modern. Our culture war seems so irrelevant.

 A close up of the culture war. Note the change in scale from the above chart.

 

Intuition continues to slowly build like the Old Master that it is.  Meanwhile the upstart rationality has shot its wad as the young genius that it was. Now we can focus on really understanding our world, intuitively and deeply.  Yes the Age of Intuition has really begun.

But, will intuition ever overcome our basic need of eating the way science has done?

 And people wonder why the religious folks are angry at science.  Science the usurper.

All fun aside, I remain skeptical about the Ngrams tool.  I used a similar technique for my essay on reflexive archaeology [2]; there I did word counts using Google Scholar for the word reflexive.  You must understand that words change meaning and nuance, and that when they change meanings their popularity within a culture can change significantly.  Reflexive was a special linguistic and mathematical term, then the psychologists used it, and then it became quite common among educated people.  That change happened in the 1950s-1960s when the meaning expanded to cover all types of self referential and collateral relations.

Therefore, use the Ngram tool wisely and don't take the charts at face value; dig behind the numbers to really see how words, ideas, and cultures change.  Charting a few words is the beginning of a study not the end.


Notes
1. I have used the period 1500-2008 as a base line.  The corpus is English (both Brits and American), and the smoothing is 3; non capitalized words. See here.

2.  "Toward a Still and Quiet Conscience: A Study in Reflexive Archaeology," North American Archaeologist, 2001, 27(2): 149-174.

Science and Magic

With family in town we decided to go down to Seattle and visit the Pacific Science Center, where the Space Needle is.  The main attraction right now is the Harry Potter exhibit.  They have many of the costumes and props from the movies on display.

What does Harry Potter have to do with science?  Nothing. (And, I like the stories).

 

There was no effort at discussing the science used making the movies or the technology involved.  You know that there must be something scientific involved in making movies.  But no.  The display was about the movies--the characters and the story line.  The magic of Harry Potter is being used as a hook to attract people to the museum.  There was also a place to buy all your favorite Harry Potter souvenirs.  It worked because the place was packed.

Many years ago museums were all about the intellectual experience of seeing all the objects on display and reading all the information boards. Education was done through reading. Then it became more experiential, you could touch and feel objects.  Then it became more visceral and realistic.  And now, we need to bribe people into museums with attractions that have no direct connection to science.

Obviously to compete in this new romantic world, scientists need to become magicians.

Update 1/2/2011:
And suddenly even repug George Will seems to understand that science is needed, and, that we need to study the culture of innovation.  Jeez, maybe he should read some Anthropology, here & here.