Twenty-second International Conference on New Directions in the Humanities

Abstract

The use of “traveling concepts” can be considered a second-order (or “meta”) perspective for developing methods in the humanities. Among the metaphorical and practical uses of this term are such processes as navigation, search, and findability. Identifying suitable transdisciplinary work in the humanities will require cognitive skills of navigating and searching, but how are these related to the idea of traveling concepts? This study adapts a typology familiar to decision making to explore the cognitive role of searching as it relates to traveling concepts. Highly unstructured navigation and search can be characterized by chance encounters, such as casual, unplanned conversations that a scholar may have with other people. Potentially useful traveling concepts emerge from these interactions; hence they have an affinity to themes in complexity theory. Semi-structured searches capture much of what scholars in traditional settings have used to identify potential traveling concepts. Examples abound – browsing in a library can be seen as a semi-structured search. This search is structured by the classification systems of the materials, as well as the physical layout of the library. Finally, highly structured searches involve analysis and definition of concepts before the search is undertaken. This approach has affinity with both “concept engineering” in philosophy and “prompt engineering” used in Large Language Models, such as those developed by OpenAI. To fully understand and implement the methodological approach of “traveling concepts”, the cognitive role of searching is considered.