Morphogenesis of epistemic networks: a case study

Abstract

Agents producing and exchanging knowledge are forming as a whole a socio-semantic complex system. We argue that several significant aspects of the structure of a knowledge community are primarily produced by the co-evolution between agents and concepts, i.e. the evolution of an epistemic network. Focus- ing on a particular community of scientists working on a well-defined topic, we micro-found various stylized facts regarding its structure by exhibiting processes at the level of agents accounting for the emergence of epistemic community struc- ture. After assessing the empirical interaction and growth processes, and assum- ing that agents and concepts are co-evolving, we successfully propose a morpho- genesis model rebuilding relevant high-level stylized facts.

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