Opening the stacks
Opening the stacks
Instruments · Echo Detector
Where two writers who share no hand said nearly the same thing a generation or more apart, sorted by what the graph knows: a recorded line between the two works, a shared idea, or nothing at all.
677 of 715 books · 95%
It sees published books with passages in the last backup of the index and a publication year, compared with every book by another hand written at least twenty years earlier or later.
Taken from the backup of index:2026-11-08: a book read in since then is not in it. 162,686 passages were grouped into 30,285 segments of 8, and 203,572,736 pairs of segments were compared. The closest 4,000 were then compared passage by passage. Indexes, front matter and back matter were left out.
The closest pairs always exist, so closeness alone means nothing. Two passages taken at chance from different books here are typically 0.362 alike, and one pairing in a thousand reaches 0.660. A pair must reach 0.815 to be called an echo: where that tail, carried on at the same slope, reaches about one pairing in a million. That is an estimate, not a measurement. 3,979 of the closest pairs fell below it.
“A recorded line” is only what the graph records. The graph’s relations were inferred by a model, and it holds none between authors. An influence it did not infer reads here as nothing joining the two.
9 pairs cleared the bar. These are the 8 strongest, with no single book or pair of books allowed to crowd the list.
1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
…At that time there was a great furor about theory choice; indeed many participants to the debate contended that was the primary task for philosophers of science, to affirm and analyze the principles of rational theory choice.
35years
…For instance, the birth of modern physics with Galileo and Newton constituted a rupture with Aristotle; similarly, in the twentieth century, relativity theory and quantum mechanics have overturned the Newtonian paradigm.
nothing joins themThe graph holds no relation between these two books and no idea in common.
alike 0.864 · the bar is 0.815
1843 History of the Conquest of Mexico
…Others contended, that, if they were supernatural beings, fraud and force would be alike useless. If they were, as they pretended, ambassadors from a foreign prince, such a policy would be cowardly and unjust.
CHAPTER VI: ACCOUNT OF MONTEZUMA—STATE OF HIS
141years
1984 The March of Folly
a foreign prince, a friendly welcome would be advisable, and if they were supernatural beings, as their wondrous attributes suggested, resistance would be useless.
Pages 27–35
nothing joins themThe graph holds no relation between these two books and no idea in common.
alike 0.838 · the bar is 0.815
1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
…In short, it is only during periods of normal science that progress seems both obvious and assured. During those periods, however, the scientific community could view the fruits of its work in no other way.
41years
2003 Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
…Historians and analysts of science are often heard to complain about the absence of any clear sense of the direction of development in the structure of modern scientific work.
Chapter 12
nothing joins themThe graph holds no relation between these two books and no idea in common.
alike 0.828 · the bar is 0.815
1986 The Cult of Information: The Folklore of Computers and the True Art of Thinking
…Wiener was much impressed by the research then under way to build chess-playing machines; this served as further evidence that machines would soon be able to process data in ways that approach the com¬ plexity of human intelligence.
25years
2011 The Information
…Feedback is the governor, the steersman. So Cybernetics became the title of Wiener’s first book, published in the fall of 1948 in both the United States and France. Subtitle: Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine.
Chapter 13. Information Is Physical
they meet at an ideaThe graph files both under Digital Society, with no line between the two works.
alike 0.827 · the bar is 0.815
1843 History of the Conquest of Mexico
A more formidable enemy still was the little republic of Tlascala, lying midway between the Mexican Valley and the coast. It had maintained its independence for more than two centuries against the allied forces of the empire.
CHAPTER VI: ACCOUNT OF MONTEZUMA—STATE OF HIS
142years
1985 Distant Neighbors: A Portrait of the Mexicans
…He lived in a manner appropriate to an emperor. Since his empire stretched east to the Gulf coast, west to the Pacific and south as far as present-day El Salvador, he, his court and the nobility and merchants benefited from products…
nothing joins themThe graph holds no relation between these two books and no idea in common.
alike 0.827 · the bar is 0.815
1981 The Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul
…The reader is again invited to put himself or herself in the shoes of the person carrying out the step-by-step simulation, and to "feel the lack of under standing" of Chinese. This is the crux of Searle's argument.
24years
…that showed that a system could instantiate a program so as to give a perfect simulation of some human cognitive capacity, such as the capacity to understand Chinese, even though that system had no understanding of Chinese whatever.
they meet at an ideaThe graph files both under Artificial Intelligence, with no line between the two works.
alike 0.822 · the bar is 0.815
1962 The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
If there were but one set of scientific problems, one world within which to work on them, and one set of standards for their solution, paradigm competition might be settled more or less routinely by some process like counting the number of…
35years
…For instance, the birth of modern physics with Galileo and Newton constituted a rupture with Aristotle; similarly, in the twentieth century, relativity theory and quantum mechanics have overturned the Newtonian paradigm.
nothing joins themThe graph holds no relation between these two books and no idea in common.
alike 0.819 · the bar is 0.815
1984 The March of Folly
…Worse is the fate of Polyxena, another daughter of Priam once desired by Achilles and now demanded by his shade, who is sacri4ced on his tomb by the victors. The crowning pity is reserved for the child Astyanax, son of Hector and…
Pages 58–68
21years
2005 Olympos
…Agamem-non always seemed to know the proper course of action. Agamemnon was their true Argive commander—not the usurper Achilles and never the Trojan bastard Hector, who presumed to give orders to Argives, Achaeans, Myrmidons, and Trojans…
Pages 18–23
nothing joins themThe graph holds no relation between these two books and no idea in common.
alike 0.817 · the bar is 0.815