SFI Research Fellow Simon DeDeo explores the quantitative analysis of historical data as an emerging way to study human history, describing his work with Tim Hitchcock and Sara Klingenstein on 150 years of court transcripts from London's Old Bailey.
Those analyses have revealed gradual changes in moral and cultural reasoning that have, since the late 18th century, repositioned violent crimes as a new, most serious category of criminal behavior, distinct from property crimes such as theft.
"It is the responsibility of the historian to reveal the nature and causes of those changes which, although imperceptible in real time, can shift our moral compass so dramatically over centuries," writes DeDeo. Increasingly, historical interpretation can be augmented through analysis of large datasets, such as the Old Bailey transcripts.
DeDeo is an SFI Omidyar Fellow alum and former Research Associate at SFI, now at Indiana University. His work on the Old Bailey dataset was done primarily at SFI.
Read DeDeo's article in Nautilus (April 24, 2014)
Watch clips of a video interview with DeDeo at nautil.us (April 24, 2014)
Read the article in The New York Times (June 17, 2014)
Read their paper in PNAS (June 16, 2014)
Read the article in New Scientist (June 13, 2014, subscription required for feature-length article)
Read the article in Nautilus (April 24, 2014)
Read DeDeo's article in Nautilus (April 24, 2014)
Watch clips of a video interview with DeDeo at nautil.us (April 24, 2014)
Watch "The Violence Paradox" on PBS Nova (November 20, 2019)
Watch "The Violence Paradox" on PBS Nova (November 20, 2019)