Of networks and infections: simulations and modeling in historical research

The reconstruction of social or material relations with digital humanities methods for historical research can be a useful tool to open new avenues of thinking. In this contribution I introduce methods applied in the context of "The Sphere", a research project aiming to understand the homogenization of scientific knowledge in the early modern period. Using a fingerprinting technique, we recover potential social relations between the producers of printed scientific textbooks. Applying models from epidemics to the spreading of parts of printed books, we can recover temporal regimes of change as well as the institutional embedding of these accumulation processes. I end with an outlook on the potential of agent-based simulation for historical research.