Cyberhistoriology: A New Approach to Historical Interpretation through the CPST Framework

Huansheng Ning and Jianguo Ding

No njhsy_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: Historical interpretation has long faced a crisis of fragmentation caused by disciplinary specialization. This article proposes “cyberhistoriology” as a methodological path to address this dilemma. Cyberhistoriology applies the CPST (Cyber-Physical-Social-Thinking) four-dimensional framework to historical reinterpretation, arguing that historical events and processes should be examined within the interactive field of these four dimensions. Taking the relationship between the Reformation and print as a central case study, this article systematically analyzes one of the most methodologically contested transformations in Western historiography. The study demonstrates that the existing debate between technological determinism (Eisenstein) and social constructivism (Johns) has fallen into a binary opposition, whereas the CPST framework reveals how print and the Reformation constituted a historical field of cyber-physical-social-thinking interaction, transcending single-dimensional causal explanations. The article further presents a comparative reference to Chinese printing to demonstrate the cross-civilizational applicability of the CPST framework. Its core contributions are threefold: first, clarifying the dual meaning of “cyber” in historical analysis—as an analytical dimension referring to the material media system of information (transhistorical), and in its contemporary form as “cyberspace” (digital networks)—thereby resolving the theoretical obstacle of applying the CPST framework to pre-digital history; second, proposing a methodology of four-dimensional interaction analysis and demonstrating its explanatory power in transcending existing methodological debates through a canonical case study; and third, articulating the academic value of cyberhistoriology in filling methodological gaps in historical interpretation.

Date: 2026-04-02
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:njhsy_v1

DOI: 10.31219/osf.io/njhsy_v1

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