a database of words from millions of books digitized by Google—4 percent of all books ever printed—could be one of the big ones. It's a fabulous source of ideas and evidence for theories about society, and it's fabulously democratic. Google offers a handy analyzer, the Ngram Viewer, which anyone can use to test an idea. A case in point: Yesterday, the social psychologist Rob Kurzban argued that the tool can distinguish between genuine scientific theories and intellectual fads.
