Bridging the Gaps with GEHIR
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| Year of publication | 2015 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | This paper introduces the project GEHIR (Generative Historiography of Religion), it's short history and it's basic principles. The problem of ancient historiography (or historiography in general) is often marked by the scarcity of evidence which is always finitely incomplete. The historian is in a role of a detective who tries to reconstruct historical reality from disconnected materials, where gaps are more of a standard. He can and must rigorously play with possibilities of putting them together. To connect them to a meaningful narrative is a question of method and theoretical framework. GEHIR answers this question via utilization of a wide array of formalized modeling approaches, like Joshua Epstein' generative social science using agent-based modeling, Peter Turchin's cliodynamics using differential equation modeling and complex network science but is not limited to any particular approach. Our goal is to use rigor and imagination of innovative computational representations to bridge the gaps not only in evidence but also in an aim to unleash the veil of the complex process of long historical change. We complement the innovative parts of the project with a conservative stance of researching highly specific problems. The project is pursuing several historical questions in the area of four chosen ancient Mediterranean religions. We see them as cases of diffusion of innovations followed on three interconnected analytical levels of spatial-population, socio-structural, and cognitive factors. |
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