Cultural analysis situs

The disciplines of complex network science, of art and cultural history, and of computation have a common ancestor in the 'analysis situs' of Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Unfortunately, this shared conceptual origin remains hidden so far within a history of science that is tragically bifurcated, due to the branching evolution of disciplinary focus, due to changes in language, and due to sometimes forced scholarly migration. This chapter breaks the mutual tear lines of citation between disciplines to enable a common future. What lies at stake is the surprisingly deep-rooted and shared foundation of the emerging enterprise of a systematic science of art and culture. This enterprise currently flourishes mainly in departments of multidisciplinary information science, network and complexity science, and applications in industry. It promises nothing less than an integration of humanistic inquiry and a physics of cultures and cultural production.