‘On the Shoulders of Giants', Analysis of a Social Network of Intellectual Influence

Intellectuals, scholars, philosophers, writers, and scientists, and their work are embedded in a long history of ideas. These traditions disseminated and diffused over a long history spanning from Greek-Roman antiquity to recent times. But how did those lines of traditions and influence of thoughts develop over the ages? How did intellectuals influence each other? What is the most far-reaching impact of influence, as well as who are the most immediate influencing, and the most influenced by other intellectuals in history? To answer these types of questions, we mined a network of influence among over 12 thousand intellectuals, from YAGO, a pioneering data source of Linked Open Data. We conducted several essential types of social network analysis, concerning connectivity, degree distribution, prestige (influence), and importance (centrality). We studied the diffusion dynamics of influence by analyzing the influence cascades in terms of size, depth and breadth. One interesting finding is the identification of two major, disjoint categories of small and large cascades of influence.