Investigating historical recipe groups through phylogenetics, text reuse detection, stylometry and process extraction.
Certain procedures in historical recipe groups became the focus of extensive reworking and circulation. One such cluster of texts is the Processus Universalis, which exists in over 100 known manuscript versions.
Computational approaches are used to categorise alchemical recipes that belong to the same recipe group but survive in different stages of development. The goal is to better understand how these texts relate to one another, especially since many are undated and their relationships remain unclear. Unlike a traditional philological stemma or collation process, reconstruction is complicated by the fact that practitioners actively experimented with these recipes in the laboratory. As a result, textual transmission is not straightforward. Many of the texts are interrelated. Digital methods help identify patterns that may bring greater order to this complex corpus. Besides text reuse detection, I have employed stylometric and phylogenetic analyses on this coprus.
I started the Processus Universalis project in 2018 together with the Gotha Netzwerk Alchemie.
The edited volume resulting from our collaboration at that time is scheduled for publication in 2026 and is currently in press (Lang, 2026). This work has also inspired me to think about the relationship between experimental and computational methods in history of science and knowledge (Lang, 2022).
Because the methods used in the original project have since evolved, I revisited the material in 2026. A number of forthcoming publications re-examine the original data and ground truth by investigating the relationship between linguistic surface features and content. To do so, I apply methods that focus either on language features or on knowledge extraction and representation.
References
2026
Zwischen Experimental und Computational History of Science: Digitales Experimentieren an alchemischen Prozessvorschriften
Sarah Lang
In Veröffentlichungen des Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt, 2026
While alchemical recipe collections have not previously been the direct subject of digital text analysis, this study combines approaches from Experimental and Computational History of Science to assess both the general applicability of digital methods to alchemical experimental texts and, more specifically, their potential to identify intratextual breaks within the Processus Universalis recipe group. It assesses the use of textual stemmatology, digital text collation, stylometry, topic modelling, word clouds, and manual thematic annotation, with particular emphasis on tracing text reuse and intertextuality through stemmatological tools and Longest Common Substring Matching. The results show that digital methods currently allow the research question to be addressed primarily at the intertextual level, whereas the detection of intratextual breaks remains beyond reach.
@incollection{Lang2026processusAlt,author={Lang, Sarah},title={Zwischen {Experimental} und {Computational History of Science}: Digitales Experimentieren an alchemischen Prozessvorschriften},booktitle={Veröffentlichungen des Landesamtes für Denkmalpflege und Archäologie Sachsen-Anhalt},volume={101},pages={69--85},year={2026},}
2022
Experiments in the digital laboratory. What the Computational Humanities can learn about their definition and terminology from the History of Science
Sarah Lang
In Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Experimente in den Digital Humanities, 2022
The notion of experiment is widely discussed in Digital Humanities, yet a precise terminology is still lacking. This article argues that a narrow set of scenarios in the subfield of the Computational Humanities can implement a definition close to that of the Sciences which transcends the metaphor of playful exploration. It proposes that we should look to those Humanities disciplines which have already integrated experimental methods into their hermeneutic arsenal such as Experimental Archaeology and the Experimental History of Science. These share an emphasis on distinguishing ‘experiencing’ from ‘experimenting’ which I argue should be applied to the Digital Humanities notion of experiment as well.
@incollection{Lang2022,author={Lang, Sarah},title={Experiments in the digital laboratory. What the Computational Humanities can learn about their definition and terminology from the History of Science},year={2022},editor={Burghardt, Manuel and Dieckmann, Lisa and Steyer, Timo and Trilcke, Peer and Walkowski, Niels-Oliver and Weis, Joëlle and Wuttke, Ulrike},booktitle={Fabrikation von Erkenntnis. Experimente in den Digital Humanities},series={Wolfenbütteler Forschungen 166},publisher={Melusina Press},address={Esch-sur-Alzette (LU)},doi={10.26298/melusina.8f8w-y749-eitd},url={https://doi.org/10.26298/melusina.8f8w-y749-eitd},}