The history of intellectuals consists of a complicated web of influences and interconnections of philosophers, scientists, writers, their work, and ideas. How did these influences evolve over time? Who were the most influential scholars in a period? To answer these questions, we mined a network of influence of over 12,500 intellectuals, extracted from the Linked Open Data provider YAGO. We enriched this network with a longitudinal perspective, and analysed time-sliced projections of the complete network differentiating between within-era, inter-era, and accumulated-era networks. We thus identified various patterns of intellectuals and eras, and studied their development in time. We show which scholars were most influential in different eras, and who took prominent knowledge broker roles. One essential finding is that the highest impact of an era's scholar was on their contemporaries, as well as the inter-era influence of each period was strongest to its consecutive one. Further, we see quantitative evidence that there was no re-discovery of Antiquity during the Renaissance, but a continuous reception since the Middle Ages.

中文翻译：

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思想史社会网络的纵向分析

知识分子的历史由哲学家、科学家、作家、他们的工作和思想的影响和相互联系的复杂网络组成。这些影响是如何随着时间演变的？谁是一个时期最有影响力的学者？为了回答这些问题，我们挖掘了一个由 12,500 多名知识分子组成的影响网络，这些网络来自链接开放数据提供商 YAGO。我们从纵向角度丰富了这个网络，并分析了区分时代内、时代间和累积时代网络的完整网络的时间切片预测。我们由此识别出知识分子和时代的各种模式，并及时研究了他们的发展。我们展示了哪些学者在不同时代最具影响力，以及谁担任了杰出的知识经纪人角色。一个重要的发现是，一个时代的学者对其同时代人的影响最大，并且每个时代的跨时代影响力都最强。此外，我们看到定量证据表明，在文艺复兴时期没有重新发现古代，而是​​自中世纪以来一直受到欢迎。