Intro

Like many Digital Humanities projects, “Six Degrees of Francis Bacon” provides for a radical departure in how data is explored. Given Francis Bacon’s stature as an English philosopher, politician, and preeminent father of the scientific method, his social connections are of particular interest to scholars. This project explores these connections of the 16th and 17th centuries in the form of a social network (or more technically speaking, an undirected, unweighted graph).

Underlying Technology & Contributions

The data set is comprised of a variety of primary sources, and particular connections are continually added with input from those in academics or by statistical analysis. R is used for statistical analysis, and the dataset is presented on the web using multiple technologies, namely Angular, Ruby on Rails, and D3.

The conflation of statistical analysis and graph theory underly the root transformation of the data into this publicly accessible online project. Any visitor of the site is free to download and use the data. Scholars and students are encouraged to contribute, although the means of contributing are not immediately obvious. In this sense, it is open source, although contributions are likely verified prior to addition to the dataset.

Other Fields

I envision many academic fields making use of this project. Historians could certainly benefit from having a more robust understanding of past figures’ social connections. Sociologists may also gain insight by exploring the so-called “six degrees of separation” paradigm, as may statisticians.