Nils Alberti

I studied computer science and sociology at the TU Dortmund University and the Humboldt University in Berlin. I completed my studies with a diploma thesis entitled "Latent Semantic Indexing for Dissecting Philosophical Works​". My central idea is about how knowledge in the humanities can not only be digitised, but also be applied in various fields. This involves in the long-term developing a search engine to find all passages relating to search queries e.g. a search for § 261 from "Basic Principles of the Philosophy of Law" would then not only direct the reader to Marx's thesis that Hegel poses an unresolved antinomy, but also to secondary literature including references to the habilitation thesis. A simple word matching, as used in Google Books, is restricted by the literary genius and creativity of authors such as Schelling, Adorno or Sartre. Semantic algorithms that capture the meaning of individual words or entire texts can however offer help broaden such search results. My diploma thesis dealt with the extent to which semantic methods are suitable for philosophical texts at all.