Allen, Timothy, et al. "Plundering
Philosophers: Identifying Sources of the Encyclopédie." Journal of the Association for History and Computing, Spring 2010, http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3310410.0013.107.
This article, on the application of Digital Humanities to the Encyclopédie, describes the process and results of a study looking at the supposed plagiarism in the work. The issue of plagiarism is one heavily contested; numerous studies have attempted to find similarities between the text of the Encyclopédie and that of writers in the 18th century and before. Allen et al. have attempted to do this through software which allows researchers to analyze texts online where potential hits can locate where two certain texts are similar. They start by defining the Encyclopedists’ strategy of incorporating others’ ideas into their own work as “plundering” rather than “plagiarizing” (and therefore communicating a slightly different connotation), Allen et al. lay out in detail the technological systems and programs they took advantage of to complete their study, also providing extensive background on the issue of plagiarism in the Encyclopédie. In the end, they share their results after comparing the Encyclopédie with two Jesuit dictionaries, each one subjected to a slightly different technological approach. The researchers did indeed find examples of “plundering” and share these findings in the article itself and through a results table linked in its notes.
Basic Information
Country of publication: United States
Language: English
Decade: 2010s
Main Classification: Digital Humanities
Related Sources
*In Progress*
Notes
1. For ease of use, the results table from this study can be accessed here.
Updates
7/2/2020: Created page.
7/6/2020: Corrected link.