Title: Philosophy and Religion in the Era of Big Data: Large-Scale Text Analysis and Database Approaches

Speaker: Edward Slingerland

University of British Columbia

Time: 2: 30PM-4PM, December, 7th, 2016

Location: School of Philosophy, Room 114 South Wing

Abstract：

This talk will discuss two on-going projects that apply “big data” approaches to the study of philosophy and religion. One project concerns the issue of the degree to which early China had a concept of mind-body dualism. The results of a series of studies, ranging from qualitative team coding to fully automated analysis, will be presented that take advantage of the fact that the Chinese textual corpus is largely digitized, allowing us to “read” it in entirely new ways. The second project concerns a massive database of religious/cultural history that is being constructed in order to subject functionalist theories of religion to more rigorous and comprehensive testing than has previously been possible, as well as allowing scholars to ask questions about cultural transmission and the contours of religious concepts and affiliations in a new way.

This lecture is followed by an info session on Database of Religious History Project/

4pm-5pm

http://www.religiondatabase.org/