Discovery Project

The Discovery Project ("Digital Semantic Corpora for Virtual Research in Philosophy") is an international consortium of content providers and software developers funded under the aegis of the European Commission's "e"Contentplus program to develop a digital library of primary and secondary sources for the study of philosophy ("Philosource"); to enrich this material with semantically structured metadata; and to create a desktop application linked to the digital library for the purpose of facilitating scholarly research in philosophy ("Philospace").

Consortium

The consortium consists of:
• the "HyperNietzsche Project" of the "Institut des Textes and Manuscrits Modernes" (ITEM) at the "Centre National de Recherche Scientifique" (CNRS), Paris
• the "Department of Electronics, Artificial Intelligence and Telecommunications" at the "Polytechnic University" of Marche, Ancona (DEIT )
• "Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee" (ILIESI), Rome
• "Net7", Internet Open Solutions, Pisa
• "RaiNet", Rome
• the "Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen" (WAB)

The "Discovery Project" was launched in November 2006 and is currently funded with a budget of € 2,912,289.00 for an initial three-year period.

Partners & Contents

According to the project website, "Philosource" will comprise material from four main areas:

1) Ancient Greek philosophy
ILIESI will prepare and publish:
• a complete electronic edition of the fragments and testimonia of the pre-Socratic philosophers, based on "Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker" edited by Diels-Kranz, in ancient Greek with translations into German and Italian
• a complete electronic edition of all testimonia related to Socrates and the so-called Minor Socratics, based on Giannantoni's "Socratis et Socraticorum Reliquiae" and including, in addition, the text of Aristophanes' Clouds and Xenophon's Socratic writings, all in ancient Greek
• the complete text of Diogenes Laertius' "Lives of the Philosophers" in ancient Greek with accompanying Italian translation

2) Modern philosophy and science
ILIESI will prepare and publish:
• Giordano Bruno, "De l’infinito, universo et mondi", "Spaccio de la bestia trionfante" and others
• Rene Descartes, "Meditationes de prima philosophia", "Passions de l’ame" and others
• Baruch Spinoza, "Tractatus politicus", "Ethica ordine geometrico demonstrata" and others
• Gottfried Leibniz, "De primae philosophiae principia" (Monadologia), "Principes de la nature et de la grâce fondés en raison" and others
• Giambattista Vico, "Principj di una scienza nuova", "De uno universi iuris principio et fine uno" and others
• Alexander Baumgarten, "Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus"
• Immanuel Kant, "De mundi sensibilis atque intelligibilis forma et principiis dissertatio" and others

3) 19th and 20th Century Philosophy
The "HyperNietzsche Project" will prepare and publish:
• Friedrich Nietzsche: The "HyperNietzsche project" will prepare a digital edition of all Nietzsche’s published works, based on the text of the first edition; digital editions of Nietzsche's "Nachlass" and correspondence; and complete genetic dossiers (all the manuscripts, fair copies, proofs plus the first edition) of several works

The "Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen" (WAB) will prepare and publish:
• Ludwig Wittgenstein: 5000 pages of his "Nachlass", including material from the "Big Typescript" complex (1929-1934), the "Brown Book" complex (1934-1936), the "Lecture on Ethics" complex (1929) and the "Notes on Logic" complex (1913), in both facsimile and critical transcription, partly with translations, and including Wittgenstein's own translations of English texts into German and vice versa

4) Contemporary Philosophy
"RAI Radiotelevisione Italiana" in Rome (RAINET) will publish 300 video and/or sound segments featuring contemporary philosophers, including Hans-Georg Gadamer, Vittorio Hösle, Emanuele Severino, Gianni Vattimo, and others.

Philosource

"Philosource" will also offer a peer-reviewed publishing venue for scholarly contributions.
"Philospace" will be a metadata-sensitive desktop "peer-to-peer" application that works in conjunction with "Philosource" to facilitate philosophical research.

Both "Philosource" and "Philospace" will be Open Source software applications that will be based on the currently existing "Hyper" and "Dbin" applications.

Organization

The coordinator of the "Project" is Paolo D'Iorio, "Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique" (CNRS).

External links

Discovery Project - http://www.discovery-project.eu/
"e"Contentplus - http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/econtentplus/index_en.htm
HyperNietzsche Project - http://www.hypernietzsche.org
Institut des Textes and Manuscrits Modernes (ITEM) - http://www.item.ens.fr/
Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) - http://www.cnrs.fr/
Department of Electronics, Artificial Intelligence and Telecommunications at the Polytechnic University of Marche, Ancona (DEIT ) - http://www.deit.univpm.it/
Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee (ILIESI) - http://www.iliesi.cnr.it/
Net7 - http://www.netseven.it
RaiNet - http://www.rai.it
Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen, WAB - http://wab.aksis.uib.no/