Salem Witch Trial Usecases
From ClioKnows
Contents |
Introduction
This set of usecases revolves around the Salem Witch trials, as outlined in our paper Toward a Knowledge Representation Corpus of Historical Events. One of the advantages of this part of history is that the documentation has been made very accessible, thanks to an e-Text project at the University of Virginia.
The paper identified several categories worthy of analysis and modeling, which form one set of top-level hooks into the knowledge organization.
Usecase by KR&R Type
Definitions
We use the last name of the historians as a convenient tag to identify the historians, their work, and their models as sources for KR&R problems. For more information on the historians, see below.
- Argument Re-Use: How did the latter authors work with the interpretations offered by their predecessors? Which arguments did they accept, which did they refute, and which did they ignore?
- Contradiction Finding: What reconstructions are internally inconsistent?
- Fallacy Detection: What are the argumentative fallacies? (Reductionists) (Karlsen)
- Modelling Mentalities: What documented “intercepted” inheritances occurred in Salem Village during the preceeding years that the girls could have known about? (Karlsen)
- Legal Analysis: Which accused could have inherited what land from whom? (Karlsen) What were the rules of inquiry for the courts in the Salem trials? (Hansen)
- Refutation: What pieces of historical evidence undermine what interpretations? (Reductionists)
- Scripts: What were the functional expectations of benevolent and malevolent witchcraft (Hansen)?
- Script Matching: Which of the symptoms described for which of the “possessed” females matches the clinical description of Post-Traumatic stress disorder? (Norton)
- Social Network Analysis: How many of the accused belonged to the Porter sphere of influence; how many of the attacked and the accusers belonged to the Putnam sphere (Boyer & Nissenbaum)? Which accused could have inherited what land from whom? (Karlsen)
- Spatial Reasoning: How many of the accused lived closer to Salem Town than to Salem Village; how many of the accusers lived closer to Salem Village than to Salem Town (Boyer & Nissenbaum)?
- Temporal Reasoning: precondition for Theory Modeling and Theory Revision
- Theory Comparison: What are the facts on which the interpretations agree? What are the facts that interpretation A cites that contradict or refute interpretation B?
- Theory Modeling: How was the community’s belief in witchcraft structured? (Hansen)
- Theory Revision: How did the legal requirements of evidence during the proceedings change? (Hansen) Which occurrences caused the respective authorities to modify their opinions? (Hansen)
- Truth Maintenance: Which parts of what interpretations became untenable only in hindsight, as research progressed?
Organizations
These KR&R problem types can now be correleated in a variety of ways. The above organization is by historian who raises the issue most directly (in some sense, all of them do of course).
Phases of Research
Another way to organize them is by the phase of the historiographical process when they apply. For the purposes of this consideration, we take the historiographical process to have three main phases (which are of course hermeneutically interleaved and are revisited as the writing and esp. the interaction with the prior literature continues):
- Conceptual Material Gathering: This is both the research in archives and the looking through the available literature for models, explanation patterns, mentioned information, etc.
- Argument Reuse
- Script Matching
- Spatial Reasoning
- Temporal Reasoning
- Theory Comparison
- Truth Maintenance
- Model Construction: This is the development of theories and explanation patterns that put semantics onto the conceptual material, organize and qualify them, and assign weights to them.
- Scripts
- Modeling Mentalities
- Legal Analysis
- Theory Modeling
- Model Validation: Here the answers for the research questions are checked for plausibility and agreement with the assumptions and expectations of the researcher. This is also the phase where global consistency can be investigated.
- Contradiction Finding
- Fallacy Detection
- Refutation
- Social Network Analysis
- Spatial Reasoning
- Temporal Reasoning
- Theory Revision
Usecases of Misconceptions
Inspired by the list of common misconceptions of Chadwick Hansen, we also maintain a list of common misunderstandings about the Salem Witch Trials. Some of these are fanned by the interpretation of the happenings in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible with their profound influence of popular notions about the trials.
Terminology
Characters
- Usecase Misconceptions Abigail Williams
- Usecase Misconceptions Giles Corey
- Usecase Misconceptions John Proctor
Usecases by Source
Where the usecase is based on documents from the Salem Witch Trial Documentation Project, we use the name or the case-file of the accused as the identifier. For historical works, we use the last name of the historians as a convenient tag to identify the historians, their work, and their models as sources for KR&R problems.
Documentation Sources
Hansen: Witchcraft at Salem
The Common Mistakes
From the list of the six common misconceptions about the Salem Witch trials that Hansen starts out his book with, this list of specific problems has been extracted.
- Usecase Hansen-Mistake Magic at Salem was the Exception
- Usecase Hansen-Mistake Girls were frauds seeking attention
- Usecase Hansen-Mistake Witchtrials were specifically Puritan
- Usecase Hansen-Mistake The Clergy was at Fault
- Usecase Hansen-Mistake The Merchants were Sensible
Boyer and Nissenbaum: Salem Possessed
Karlsen: The Devil in the Shape of a Woman
Norton: In the Devil's Clutch
Reductionists
By reductionists we refer categorically to forms of historical writing that want to take the socio-politically complex problem of Salem and reduce it to the after-effects of a mono-causal, external circumstance.
- Linnda Caporeal and the theory of ergot poisoning
- Laurie Carlson and the theory of (bird) tick-born encephalitis lethargica
