Digital Edition of the Diaries of Rudolf Carnap 1908-1935 (FWF-Grant PUD 31-G)

The Context

Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970) is regarded as a classic of 20th century analytic philosophy and the philosophy of science. This is true for his work as a member of the Vienna Circle (1926-1935) and for his time in the US (1936-1970). This digital edition project will be carried out between 2023 and 2025 on the basis of the FWF Grant for Digital Publication PUD 31-G (€ 50,000). It is based on a printed edition of Carnap’s early diaries (1908-1935) that appeared in two volumes in 2022 with Meiner Verlag Hamburg (1908-1919 and 1920-1935) and was the outcome of two previous FWF projects (Early Carnap in Context, FWF research grant P27733; Carnap in Context II, FWF research grant P31716; FWF publication grants PUB 775 and PUB 776). The digital edition will be developed in the course of the current research project Carnap in Context III (FWF research grant P 34887) and is part of the broad research initiative Rudolf Carnap Digital that is developed as a cooperation between the Institute Vienna Circle, the Bavarian Academy of Science, and the Munich Center for Mathematical Philosophy.

The diaries are the core element of this long-term project because they provide invaluable sources on the history of Logical Empiricism that contextualize this movement in the overall political and cultural history of the 20th century. Carnap’s diaries are particularly suited for an online edition because in this context they can be embedded with a wide variety of additional information that is available online. Covering more than six decades (1908-1970) Carnap’s diaries frame the history of Logical Empiricism and provide background information on intellectual networks; furthermore, they are embedded into the political and cultural historical context. More specifically, the diaries mention thousands of people and institutions from Carnap’s intellectual and private network as well as thousands of publications and scientific events that were of particular interest to him. The bulk of this research, therefore, will be to collect the necessary biographical, historical, and bibliographical information and embed it into a fine-grained net of metadata that will be made available in VALEP and, in future implementations of this database, will also be integrated into other open web resources such as Wikidata. Consequently, the diaries will function as a hub that embeds information on logical empiricist networks and publications with other web resources on the history of Logical Empiricism, in VALEP and elsewhere. Last but not least, a key asset of the online edition is that information can be continuously updated, whereas the printed edition conserves a quickly outdated state of knowledge. This is particularly important in the present case, because Carnap’s diaries represent a tangle of references that might never be completely disentangled. This involves an open-ended editorial process that can only be realized in an online setting.

Functionalities that will be added to VALEP for the purpose of this online edition

For the purpose of this online edition, we will add specific functionalities including versions that contain markup in LaTeX, HTML5, and TEI-XML to VALEP; markup functionalities for several metadata categories and documents; and upload functionalities for documents at the level of java and python scripts.

Versions that contain markup in LaTeX, HTML5, and TEI-XML

This is the key functionality for online editions in VALEP. In addition to the current feature of versions that contain files, there will be versions that represent the textual/editorial side of a document by means of LaTeX markup and automatically convert this markup into HTML5 and TEI-XML.

• The LaTeX code used here will be a modified version of the LaTeX code of the printed edition of Carnap’s diaries, which primarily uses specific commands that were defined for the purpose of this edition. The basis is a LaTeX style that was programmed by DaTeX Blumenstein Leipzig, on behalf of Meiner Verlag Hamburg. Both the LaTeX style and the actual LaTeX code of the edition are open access. Modifications to the original LaTeX code will become necessary in those cases, in particular, where the LaTeX code does not offer sufficient information to generate the HTML5/TEI-XML output.
• The LaTeX code is locally stored in VALEP but will always be synchronized with a git server that also stores the HTML5, and TEI-XML representations of all VALEP documents and makes these electronic resources freely available for download to other digital humanities researchers.
• TEI-XML and HTML5 will be generated from LaTeX by a python script that will be developed based on existing solutions and in cooperation with Eckart Arnold from the Bavarian Academy of Science. The HTML5 representation, together with a suited set of CSS styles, visualizes the text in the file viewer of VALEP.
• In the file viewer of VALEP, the default view of a markup version will be HTML5, using a complex graphical layout implemented in CSS for links, references, indices, and annotations; however, the TEI-XML sources will also be available and the LaTeX sources will be both viewable and editable in the file viewer.
• Additionally, the file viewer can optionally be split/opened in two instances so that, for example, the facsimile of a diary entry and the electronic edition can be viewed in parallel.

A note on LaTeX, HTML5, and TEI-XML

Because LaTeX, TEI-XML, and HTML5 are all widely used standards, they are all suited for long-term storage of the textual side of this edition: LaTeX covers the layout of the printed edition; HTML5/CSS the layout of the online edition; and TEI-XML the logical and semantical layout of the text. However, since HTML5 also offers semantic aspects, the aim is to offer semantic markup in both the HTML5 and the TEI-XML representation of the text. The TEI-XML representation, therefore, is more intended as a service for digital humanities researchers who already use TEI-XML. It will hardly contain any additional information that is not offered by the HTML5 representation as well.

Markup functionalities for metadata and documents

In the printed edition of the diaries, all indices were specified by LaTeX commands of the form \IX{\comm} where X is a capital letter that specifies the index (N for persons, I for institutions, W for publications, etc.). In addition, \comm is a LaTeX command that is currently stored in an SQL database EDIT that associates the command-string with the respective biographical or bibliographical information needed to specify a suitable definition for the LaTeX command \comm. Currently, this SQL database has not been integrated into VALEP. Therefore, the main task here will be to import the data from EDIT to VALEP, namely, by means of two different strategies:

• In the case of persons and institutions, the EDIT data will be integrated into the existing VALEP tables for authorities.
• In the case of publications, all EDIT data will be represented in VALEP by means of documents that contain bibliographical data. This causes maximal flexibility, because such documents might also contain a scan of the respective publication, a transcription, an electronic edition, etc.
• In the cases of both authorities and bibliographical documents, a data field will be added in VALEP that consists of the original LaTeX command \comm. In this way, the system can be used for (a) specifying the respective \newcommand specifications for using \comm in the LaTeX code and (b) integrating the respective VALEP information into the HTML5 and TEI-XML representation.

Note also that links to all documents from the Nachlass of Rudolf Carnap and other archival resources that were cited in the printed edition were already implemented by means of DOIs that refer to the respective VALEP documents (Carnap 2022a, 59). These links will be automatically available in the online edition as well.

Data upload and import by means of python or java scripts; manual data entry

The bulk of data of this online edition is already available in electronic form. This includes the LaTeX sources of the printed edition of Carnap’s diaries and the database EDIT that consists of information on persons, institutions, and publications being referenced in the diaries. Thus, a major task of this online edition is to transfer this existing data into VALEP. The transfer will be done by means of several python and java scripts:

• A java script that imports all datasets of the EDIT database that contain information on persons and institutions to the respective VALEP tables. This script also includes the respective \comm string that is used in the LaTeX source code, and it tries to identify those documents that cover information on persons or institutions being already available in VALEP; for these documents a strategy to avoid redundancies will be developed.
• A java script that imports all datasets of the EDIT database that contain bibliographical information into VALEP documents. This script also includes the respective \comm string that is used in the LaTeX source code, and it tries to identify those datasets that cover bibliographical information being already available in VALEP; for these datasets a strategy to avoid redundancies will be developed.
• Python and java scripts that (a) split the LaTeX sources of the printed edition into portions that cover single entries, (b) create a VALEP document for each entry, and (c) store the LaTeX code of this entry in this document together with all metadata that can be automatically carried out.

Note that the manual data entry tasks that form large parts of this online edition project are all connected with these data upload and import tasks. There are the following reasons that make manual data entry necessary, although the bulk of data is already available in electronic form:

• VALEP already houses data on some of the persons, institutions, locations, and publications being referenced in the diaries; in all these cases two varieties of the same metadata resource result that need to be manually brought together.
• VALEP uses more fine-grained data structures for authorities and publications than those being initially used in EDIT; this implies that the original LaTeX data must be supplemented after their automatic transfer to VALEP. For example, the name, life dates and biographical information on a person were stored in a single LaTeX string in EDIT; VALEP, instead uses extra data fields for these data. Though the LaTeX string can be automatically split into the respective data fields, the result needs to be double checked. Moreover, VALEP offers the exact days of birth and death whereas the diaries edition only mentioned the years of death and birth. Information like that needs to be supplemented in VALEP.
• There are slight changes to the LaTeX code that involve that the entire LaTeX code must be manually went through and corrected; this indispensable task of quality control is expected to be time consuming (see section 4 for a detailed schedule), because in all cases where the automatic transfer from LaTeX to HTML5 and TEI-XML is either impossible or causes unsatisfactory results (such as it is to be expected, e.g., in cases of complex tables or unusual formats such as braces that summarize several diary entries – cf. (Carnap 2022a, 185, 318-321)) the respective HTML and TEI-XML code needs to be manually edited and then will be directly added as an argument to the LaTeX code. (The respective LaTeX command will have the form \fromlatextohtml{LaTeX code}{HTML code}.)