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How does scientific progress affect cultural changes? A digital text analysis

Author

Listed:
  • Michela Giorcelli

    (University of California)

  • Nicola Lacetera

    (University of Toronto, and NBER)

  • Astrid Marinoni

    (Scheller College of Business - Georgia Institute of Technology)

Abstract

We study the effects of scientific changes on broader cultural discourse, two phenomena that the economics literature identifies as key drivers of long-term growth, focusing on a unique episode in the history of science: the elaboration of the theory of evolution by Charles Darwin. We measure cultural discourse through the digitized text analysis of a corpus of hundreds of thousands of books as well as of Congressional and Parliamentary records for the US and the UK. We find that some concepts in Darwin’s theory, such as Evolution, Survival, Natural Selection and Competition, significantly increased their presence in the public discourse immediately after the publication of On the Origin of Species. Moreover, several words that embedded the key concepts of the theory of evolution experienced semantic and sentiment changes—further channels through which Darwin’s theory influenced the broader discourse. Our findings represent the first large-sample, systematic quantitative evidence of the relation between two key determinants of long-term economic growth, and suggest that natural language processing offers promising tools to explore this relation.

Suggested Citation

  • Michela Giorcelli & Nicola Lacetera & Astrid Marinoni, 2022. "How does scientific progress affect cultural changes? A digital text analysis," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 27(3), pages 415-452, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:kap:jecgro:v:27:y:2022:i:3:d:10.1007_s10887-022-09204-6
    DOI: 10.1007/s10887-022-09204-6
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    Cited by:

    1. Benjamin W. Arold, 2022. "Evolution vs. Creationism in the Classroom: The Lasting Effects of Science Education," ifo Working Paper Series 379, ifo Institute - Leibniz Institute for Economic Research at the University of Munich.
    2. Barber, Luke & Jetter, Michael & Krieger, Tim, 2024. "Foreshadowing Mars: Religiosity and pre-Enlightenment conflict in Europe," VfS Annual Conference 2024 (Berlin): Upcoming Labor Market Challenges 302355, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    3. Barber, Luke & Jetter, Michael & Krieger, Tim, 2023. "Foreshadowing Mars: Religiosity and Pre-enlightenment Warfare," IZA Discussion Papers 16586, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Kyle R. Myers & Wei Yang Tham & Jerry Thursby & Marie Thursby & Nina Cohodes & Karim Lakhani & Rachel Mural & Yilun Xu, 2023. "New Facts and Data about Professors and their Research," Papers 2312.01442, arXiv.org.
    5. Dengsheng Wu & Huidong Wu & Jianping Li, 2024. "Citation advantage of positive words: predictability, temporal evolution, and universality in varied quality journals," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 129(7), pages 4275-4293, July.
    6. Gonzalez, Felipe & Coy, Felipe & Prem, Mounu & von Dessauer, Cristine, 2022. "Uncertainty from dictatorship to democracy: Evidence from business communications," SocArXiv gz934, Center for Open Science.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Culture; Science; Natural language processing; History; Growth;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C55 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Large Data Sets: Modeling and Analysis
    • N00 - Economic History - - General - - - General
    • O39 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Other
    • O49 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - Other
    • Z10 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - General
    • Z13 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Language; Social and Economic Stratification

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