Ambix Special Issue on “Computational Approaches to the Histories of Alchemy and Chemistry”
This special issue negotiates the opportunities, challenges and responsibilities involved in using computational methods for historical research.
In 2025–2026, I co-edited the *Ambix* Special Issue on “Computational Approaches to the Histories of Alchemy and Chemistry” together with Guillermo Restrepo and Farzad Mahootian. The project was catalysed by the wonderful May 2025 NYU Abu Dhabi workshop, *The Alchemy of Global Partnerships*, convened by Farzad Mahootian. It explores computational approaches to these fields while also reflecting more broadly on the role of computational methods in historiography, including their challenges, opportunities, epistemic horizons, and epistemic responsibilities (Mahootian et al., 2026). In the epilogue (Lang, 2026), I examine whether a computational history of science currently exists as a distinct field. I argue that it does not yet exist in a fully developed form, but I outline the conditions that would be necessary for it to emerge as a recognised sub-discipline. Beyond my involvement in writing the introduction and epilogue, the special issue also includes two of my own contributions on alchemical dictionaries. One investigates Arabic terminology, leveraging LLMs for a hybrid close and distant reading, with the aim of contributing to a more global history of alchemy and chemistry (Lang et al., 2026). At the same time, we also critically assess the potential risks associated with using large language models for Arabic, a language that is not among the dominant Western languages on which many such models are primarily trained (Lang et al., 2026). The second study performs distributional semantics and tracks the provenance of Ruland's terms across an earlier corpus (Kaše & Lang, 2026). In a related project, we have also explored the semantic abilities of LLMs for metaphor detection (Kaše et al., 2025).
References
2026
Introduction: Computational Approaches to the Histories of Alchemy and Chemistry
Farzad Mahootian, Sarah Lang, and Guillermo Restrepo
The promise of computational methods opens new epistemic horizons. Yet, as we discuss in this introduction to the special issue on computational approaches to the histories of alchemy and chemistry, it also brings new epistemic responsibilities. We situate this work within a broader digital and computational history and in relation to earlier traditions of quantitative history as well as to developments in digital humanities and computational humanities. We distinguish between digital, computational, algorithmic, and AI-driven approaches and clarify methodological and epistemological concerns that keep the historian firmly in the loop. Claims about computational methods often claim to enable entirely new modes of inquiry. Yet on their own, such claims can also obscure the limitations and conditions under which these methods operate. This introduction therefore explores both the opportunities and the constraints of computational approaches that more celebratory accounts sometimes overlook. It introduces the individual contributions to the special issue and concludes with a call for responsibility in the adoption of computational methods. We argue for making the histories of alchemy and chemistry more critical, global, and reflexive, while remaining attentive to the assumptions, limitations, and implications of the computational tools we employ.
@article{MahootianLangRestrepo2026,author={Mahootian, Farzad and Lang, Sarah and Restrepo, Guillermo},title={Introduction: Computational Approaches to the Histories of Alchemy and Chemistry},journal={Ambix},year={2026},volume={74},}
Epilogue: A Computational Turn? Digital and Computational History of Science, Knowledge and Technology
With digital and computational methods becoming more visible both in scholarly and everyday contexts, it is timely to ask whether a distinct field of digital and computational history of science, knowledge, and technology can meaningfully be said to exist. This epilogue to the special issue on computational approaches to the history of alchemy and chemistry addresses this question, arguing that such an overarching field does not yet exist. To fulfill its programmatic promises, a digital and computational history of science, knowledge, and technology must focus on conceptual clarity regarding its disciplinary position. If digital and computational approaches are to contribute meaningfully to the history of science and knowledge, they must support efforts to produce more global and inclusive historiographies rather than reproducing existing biases in available datasets and algorithms. Indeed, one of the most important tasks for the future may be the creation of datasets for under-resourced subfields and historical questions. Thus, this paper argues not only for a commitment to diversity in the subjects, cultures, languages, periods, and forms of knowledge considered: Only through employing a plurality of methods can a computational history of science, knowledge, and technology adequately reflect the diversity of knowledges represented within the broader field.
@article{Lang2026Epilogue,author={Lang, Sarah},title={Epilogue: A Computational Turn? Digital and Computational History of Science, Knowledge and Technology},journal={Ambix},year={2026},volume={74},}
Mediating Alchemical Language across Terminologies and Cultures in Ruland’s Lexicon Alchemiae: A Data-Driven Study of Arabic Terms
From the sixteenth century onwards, reference works emerged as means to transmit technical specialist knowledge to wider audiences. Authors, practitioners, and readers of early modern alchemy and chymistry had to navigate a terminological landscape that drew on Latin, European vernacular languages, and loanwords from languages such as Arabic. Martin Ruland the Younger’s Lexicon Alchemiae (1612) occupies a central position in the early modern efforts to organise alchemical knowledge through lexicography. Emerging from the Paracelsian tradition yet extending beyond it, the work combines Latin entries with vernacular glosses and incorporates terminology drawn from a wide range of intellectual traditions. Approaching Ruland’s Lexicon Alchemiae as a reference book, this article investigates how it mediates terminology across linguistic and cultural boundaries, with particular attention to Arabic-derived terms. Drawing on a digital edition, the study combines computational analysis and close reading to examine the structure and contextual use of these terms within the dictionary through selected case studies, such as entries relating to alcohol. The resulting dataset offers new insights into the construction of the lexicon and provides a foundation for further research on Arabic terminology and intercultural knowledge transmission in early modern alchemy.
@article{LangMahootianLashen2026,author={Lang, Sarah and Mahootian, Farzad and Lashen, Hazem},title={Mediating Alchemical Language across Terminologies and Cultures in Ruland's Lexicon Alchemiae: A Data-Driven Study of Arabic Terms},journal={Ambix},year={2026},volume={74},doi={10.1080/00026980.2026.2697142}}
Confabulated Transliterations? Managing the Lure of Plausibility in LLM-Detected Arabic Terms in an Early Modern Lexicon
Sarah Lang, Jonas Müller-Laackmann, Hazem Lashen, and 1 more author
In Critical Approaches to Automated Text Recognition, 2026
This article examines the problem of confabulated transliterations in the context of large language models (LLMs) used for automated text recognition (ATR) tasks. Focusing on a digital humanities case study, we analyse an early 17th-century Latin-German alchemical dictionary that also contains multilingual entries, including Arabic-derived terms. Our aim was to use LLMs in an OCR post-correction workflow to identify these Arabic terms, which may have been creatively transliterated into early modern Latin. The transcription was only partially clean, further complicating the task with the potential presence of OCR noise. Positioned between post-correction and multilingual retrieval, this use case highlights both the potential and the limitations of LLMs in historical multilingual settings. In particular, we explore the lure of plausibility and the difficulty of verifying LLM-generated outputs, especially when dealing with under-resourced or especially ambiguous languages such as Arabic. The article reflects on existing strategies for managing such challenges while demonstrating how LLMs can mislead through confident yet inaccurate suggestions. We argue for a cautious, critically informed approach to LLM use in the humanities and offer an illustrative example of some of the problems that emerge in historically and linguistically complex scenarios.
@incollection{LangEtAl2026Confabulated,author={Lang, Sarah and M{\"u}ller-Laackmann, Jonas and Lashen, Hazem and Mahootian, Farzad},title={Confabulated Transliterations? Managing the Lure of Plausibility in LLM-Detected Arabic Terms in an Early Modern Lexicon},booktitle={Critical Approaches to Automated Text Recognition},editor={Terras, Melissa and Gooding, Paul and Ames, Sarah and Nockels, Joe},publisher={Facet Publishing},address={London},year={2026},note={Forthcoming},}
Contextual Word Embeddings for Paracelsian Lexicography: Tangled Terminologies and Their Origins in Ruland’s Alchemical Dictionary
Martin Ruland the Younger’s Lexicon Alchemiae (1612) is one of the most influential alchemical dictionaries of the early modern period, yet its sources and compilation methods remain poorly understood. This study applies computational approaches to investigate the vocabulary underlying Ruland’s lexicon and to identify potential textual influences. Using a TEI-XML encoded version of the Lexicon Alchemiae, a standard data format for encoding textual data in the digital humanities, we extract its headwords and compare them against large-scale digital corpora of Latin literature, including the Early Modern Latin Alchemical Prints (EMLAP) dataset and the broader GreLa database. By combining frequency-based lexical comparison with contextual word embeddings generated through a Latin BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) model, the analysis traces both the distribution and semantic behaviour of terms across earlier alchemical and scientific texts. The article is accompanied by an interactive web application allowing readers to explore additional case studies. Our analysis indicates that Ruland drew not only on earlier Paracelsian word lists, but also on large-scale contemporary compilations such as Andreas Libavius’s Alchemia (1597), suggesting that the Lexicon Alchemiae should be understood within a broader movement to systematise and professionalise alchemical knowledge in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
@article{KaseLang2026Ambix,author={Ka{\v{s}}e, Vojt{\v{e}}ch and Lang, Sarah},title={Contextual Word Embeddings for Paracelsian Lexicography: Tangled Terminologies and Their Origins in Ruland's Alchemical Dictionary},journal={Ambix},year={2026},volume={74},doi={10.1080/00026980.2026.2692190}}
2025
Embedded in the Labyrinth: Investigating Latin Word Senses through Transformer-Based Contextual Embeddings and Attention
Vojtěch Kaše, Sarah Lang, and Petr Pavlas
In Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference 2025, 2025
This paper explores how transformer-based models can enhance historical keyword-in-context studies through automatic word sense disambiguation (WSD). Using the Latin term labyrinthus as a case study, we analyze its contextual meanings across time and genre within the GreLa corpus. A Large language model provides preliminary sense labels, which we use to evaluate 64 embedding variants—contextual, attention-based, and co-occurrence-based—derived from XLM-R and Latin BERT. Our results show that combining embedding types yields the best performance. We also illustrate how attention-based embeddings capture meaningful diachronic patterns, offering promising directions for future research on semantic change and metaphor in historical texts.
@inproceedings{KaseLangPavlas2025,author={Ka{\v{s}}e, Vojt{\v{e}}ch and Lang, Sarah and Pavlas, Petr},title={Embedded in the Labyrinth: Investigating Latin Word Senses through Transformer-Based Contextual Embeddings and Attention},booktitle={Proceedings of the Computational Humanities Research Conference 2025},year={2025},doi={10.63744/FuaAvdPMdtwW},url={https://anthology.ach.org/volumes/vol0003/embedded-in-labyrinth-investigating-latin-word/},keywords={labyrinth, keyword-in-context, computational Latin philology, contextual word embeddings, automatic word sense disambiguation, word sense induction, semantic change detection, metaphor detection}}