Avaliação quantitativa da introspecção na literatura histórica e sua associação a grafos

Abstract

The putative association between introspection variations and mentality impulsed the desire to understand the social development of thought. According to some authors, the Axial Age (period from 800 BC to 200 BC) supposedly denotes a transition period between a bicameral to a more contemplative mind. Others argue that the period is characterized merely by socio-economic development rather than a change in mentality. A bicameral mind would be represented by auditory hallucinations, inner voices associated with external agents, as moralizing gods instead of self-volition. Such auditory responses are expressed in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia, who may also have poor connectivity in speech, known as thought-form disorder, which would be the “derailed” thought presented in discourse. Long-Range Recurrence can measure connectivity, the capacity to combine the current context with something previously said. In non-semantic graphs, Long-Range Recurrence is represented by the Largest Strongly Connected Component. Hence, it is not an overstatement to imagine that low connectivity and introspection could be associated with thought variations. Some studies attest to literacy’s influence on poor connectivity, inferring that this speech attribute would have developed during the Axial Era, thus supporting the hypothesis of a change in mentality during the period. Another idea is that the transitions from oral traditions to literacy and lower to higher introspection would be intrinsic. Moreover, the computational use of Natural Language Processing, such as Latent Semantic Analysis, supported a quantitative measure of introspection in texts from Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman, and Modern Era traditions. Therefore, we propose a quantitative analysis of introspection in texts from 9 historical traditions (≥ 4500 years), in addition to their temporal evolution and relationship with speech connectivity. Using Latent Semantic Analysis and non-semantic graphs, our results reveal that introspection changes occurred during the Axial Era and other periods characterized by economic development. Furthermore, introspection directly relates to Long-Range Recurrence, suggesting that language variations are correlated with introspection shifts and thought development.