Theory, Method, Style

Google must love how we all immediately jump on their new toy and blog about it. (I got it from Brayden at OrgTheory.) Well, it is a cool app.



theory,method gives a not very surprising, but still intriguing, result. Theres's an interesting “event” from about 1860 to 1875, where method seems to reverse its declining fortunes by hitching itself to the rise of theory. Method drops off around 1960 (after rising much faster than theory and holding steady since the 1920s) and, very predictably, theory overtakes method in mid-1960s.

I agree with Andrei (in the comments at Orgtheory) about the recent trends. It just looks like the corpus is smaller in the database. That's confirmed by this chart, too:



It also shows that while "theory" and "method" are subject to the caprice of fashion, style is a rock, a stable foundation.