Hi Bernard, I second Matthew's reference to Manuel Lima, *The Book of Trees <https://www.papress.com/html/product.details.dna?isbn=9781616892180>*, an art-historical treatment of just this question, including a taxonomy of kinds of trees. And Theodora's reference to her own work! I have an article discussing the development of trees and graphs as mathematical objects and calculation devices in comparison/connection with the graphical practices of organic chemists circa the late 19th century and 1960s: - Evan Hepler-Smith, “Paper Chemistry: François Dagognet and the Chemical Graph,” *Ambix* 65, no. 1 (2018): 76–98, https://doi.org/10.1080/00026980.2017.1418232. (Preprint linked on my website <http://evanheplersmith.com/publications>; I can send a PDF of the published version to anyone interested.) Alexander et al., *A Pattern Language* also seems relevant to this question, though not specifically about trees. (Although Alexander's earlier essay "A City is Not a Tree" might be.) Evan On Thu, Mar 26, 2020 at 2:21 PM BRIAN JUSTIE <b1@ucla.edu> wrote:
Bernard, Johanna Drucker’s *Graphesis* <https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674724938> has a brief section (pp. 95-105) on the history of tree diagrams in humanistic inquiry, which includes a handful of potentially useful citations. Hope this helps, Brian
— Brian Justie *b1@ucla.edu <b1@ucla.edu> *
PhD Student, Department of Information Studies Researcher, UCLA Labor Center
On Mar 26, 2020, at 2:03 PM, Jeff Scott Nagy <jsnagy@stanford.edu> wrote:
Dear Bernie,
If by trees in CS you mean at least in part the abstract data type, Knuth gives a short history and bibliography on pp. 406-7 of the first volume of *The Art of Computer Programming*, the section beginning with "Trees have of course been in existence since the third day of creation..." On p. 459, he gives a little more on the history of trees as CS data structures in particular.
Happy to send photos of these pages if they'd be of use! I think the files are too big to not get bounced by the list though.
Sincerely, Jeff
------------------------------ *From:* Members <members-bounces@lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of Bernard Geoghegan <bernardgeoghegan2010@u.northwestern.edu> *Sent:* Thursday, March 26, 2020 4:05 PM *To:* Sigcis <members@sigcis.org> *Subject:* [SIGCIS-Members] Tree diagrams in computer science and other fields (i.e. genealogy)
Dear Colleagues,
A little query sent across the lockdowns and quarantines: Can anyone recommend scholarship on the tree-style diagrams that circulate both in computer science and a wide range of other fields, for example, genealogy, kinship? Is there any good work on the history of these diagrams, their intersection, and what they might say about possible links in styles of reasoning across fields that might, otherwise, seem remote?
Thanks for your thoughts, b
-- Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Digital Media Chair of the UG Assessment Board, Digital Culture www.bernardg.com
Department of Digital Humanities King's College London The Strand Building Room S3.08 WC2R 2LS
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_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members at sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://lists.sigcis.org/pipermail/members-sigcis.org/ and you can change your subscription options at http://lists.sigcis.org/listinfo.cgi/members-sigcis.org
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