Stay Tuned the Future: Impact of the Research Infrastructures for Social Sciences and Humanities

Almost all presentations which were given at the conference held at the seat of the Fondazione Scienze Religiose Giovanni XXIII (FSCIRE) in Bologna on 24-25 January 2018 have found their way to this volume. Appropriate funding was provided by the Regione Emilia Romagna and the Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna. The editors wish to thank István Kenesei, Georg Lutz, Alberto Melloni, Sonia Stefanizzi and Matthew Woollard for their careful reviews of all papers, Matthew Woollard also for his support in editorial matters. They also express their gratitude to Antonio Lamarra, the director of the Institute for the European Intellectual Lexicon and History of Ideas of the National Research Council of Italy (Iliesi-Cnr), and to its scientific committee for having accepted this volume in its flagship series «Lessico intellettuale europeo». Our gratitude and a special appreciation go to Maria Cristina Dalfino for her impeccable editorial work at Iliesi-Cnr. Let it be reminded that with its lexical approach to a database embracing one-hundred great books in the history of philosophy and science published between 1600 and 1800 Iliesi-Cnr has played a pioneering role in opening up digital humanities by providing access to one of the first digital libraries, which was started in 1964 and became operative in 1967. Researchers of Iliesi-Cnr investigate several epochs under the assumption that at the root of the history of philosophy and of the sciences and more generally of the history of ideas lie textual corpora that have been developed in the context of each discipline over the centuries. Historical semantic tools consider technical uses and ambiguities, synchronic and diachronic interrelations, translations and transpositions across lexical fields. The specificity of their methodology requires keeping close to texts, individual terms and lexical families. Hence the publication of lexica, indices and concordances, the setting-up of data-bases and scientific data processing applied to technical terminology in the humanities.