Geometric Signatures of Conceptual Reorganization: A Counterfactual Embedding Framework for Detecting Scientific Revolutions

📅 2026-09-13
📈 Citations: 0
Influential: 0
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🤖 AI Summary
本文通过引入文档嵌入几何和反事实消融框架,提供了一种量化检测科学革命的方法,用以测量单个概念对科学知识组织的影响。
📝 Abstract
We introduce document embedding geometry as a quantitative observable of conceptual reorganization and develop a counterfactual ablation framework for measuring how individual concepts influence the organization of scientific knowledge, providing a quantitative framework for detecting scientific revolutions. The observable is defined by the geometric perturbation induced when removing documents associated with a candidate concept from the embedding space before and after its historical emergence. Statistical validation is performed using five historical case studies spanning physics, mathematics, and machine learning: special relativity, Gödel's incompleteness theorems, the Higgs mechanism, deep learning, and the attention mechanism underlying transformer architectures. Across the historical case studies, the framework identifies measurable geometric signatures associated with conceptual reorganization, while the validation studies expose important limitations arising from document assignment and sparse historical data. These results establish embedding geometry as a medium for quantifying conceptual reorganization, providing a new approach for studying how scientific fields restructure over time.
Problem

Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.

conceptual reorganization
scientific revolutions
document embedding
geometric signatures
Innovation

Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.

document embedding geometry
conceptual reorganization
counterfactual ablation framework
geometric signatures
D
Dimitris Ntounis
Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
A
Ariel Schwartzman
SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, Menlo Park, CA, USA
C
Chris Chafe
Department of Music, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
T
Thomas A. Ryckman
Department of Philosophy, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA