Semantic Categorization of Segments of Ancient and Mediaeval Zoological Texts

International audienceIn this paper we present a preliminary work conducted in the framework of the multidisciplinary research network Zoomathia, which aims at studying the transmission of zoological knowledge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages through compilation literature. We propose an approach of knowledge extraction from ancient texts consisting in semantically categorizating text segments based on machine learning methods applied to a representation of segments built by processing their translations in modern languages with Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods and by exploiting a dedicated thesaurus of zoology-related concepts. The final aim is to semantically annotate the ancient texts and reason on these annotations to help epistemologists, historians and philolo-gists in their analysis of these texts

Semantic Categorization of Segments of Ancient and Mediaeval Zoological Texts

International audienceIn this paper we present a preliminary work conducted in the framework of the multidisciplinary research network Zoomathia, which aims at studying the transmission of zoological knowledge from Antiquity to the Middle Ages through compilation literature. We propose an approach of knowledge extraction from ancient texts consisting in semantically categorizating text segments based on machine learning methods applied to a representation of segments built by processing their translations in modern languages with Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods and by exploiting a dedicated thesaurus of zoology-related concepts. The final aim is to semantically annotate the ancient texts and reason on these annotations to help epistemologists, historians and philolo-gists in their analysis of these texts

Cultural impressions of the wolf, with specific reference to the man-eating wolf in England

An examination of attitudes towards the wolf, specifically the man-eating wolf in England. Recent studies by zoologists have claimed that the wolf does not fully merit the bad reputation afforded it by many individuals and groups. In particular it has been claimed that the wolf rarely, if ever, eats people. This contradicts legends, historical records and other accounts. This study examines the history of the wolf in England and the various sources which were available, and likely to have influenced impressions of the animal. Because the wolf has been extinct in England for approximately six hundred years it is likely that such impressions were and are formed by sources other than direct observation. The results of a questionnaire which ascertained the opinions of 187 people, mostly in England, about wolves are included

Ars Edendi Lecture Series

This is the fifth and final volume of lectures on textual criticism and classical philology - broadly understood - given within the framework of the Ars edendi research programme (2008-2015). ;Two of the six papers in this volume stem from a 2015 workshop on editorial theory and method, the theme of which dealt with fragments and the writing of commentaries. As regards the former, S. Douglas Olson problematizes the creation and continuation of scholarly knowledge concerning texts that have only come down to us in a fragmentary state, emphazising the challenges and pitfalls that lay in wait for the editor. Benjamin Millis offers a nuanced homage and apology for the traditional text edition with a scholarly commentary, especially underscoring its importance as a connective pathway between text and reader as well as the impetus it can give to scholarly research. ;The other four lectures were given at the concluding conference of the Ars edendi programme, held in August 2016. In a case study Cynthia Damon shares her reflections on how to digitally edit Pliny’s Natural History in a form that will provide this work’s rich reception history and at the same time its extensive use of sources, many of which are now lost. The digital component is also prominent in Odd Einar Haugen’s contribution in which he shows that digital mark-up is also an editorial enterprise and how it can be useful for the textual scholar. Dorothea Weber gives an insider’s view of the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum, an editorial project on-going since 1864, and especially how improved cataloguing has led to numerous discoveries of texts by St. Augustine. As a conclusion to the volume, David Greetham, one of the founders of the Society for Textual Scholarship, reflects on three different methods for editing texts that have undergone various degrees of rescription, namely the oeuvres of Eriugena, Coleridge, and Eliot

Handbook of Stemmatology

Stemmatology studies aspects of textual criticism that use genealogical methods. This handbook is the first to cover the entire field, encompassing both theoretical and practical aspects, ranging from traditional to digital methods. Authors from all the disciplines involved examine topics such as the material aspects of text traditions, methods of traditional textual criticism and their genesis, and modern digital approaches used in the field

Rethinking established methodology in micromammal taphonomy: archaeological case studies from Orkney, UK (4th millennium BC – 15th century AD)

Micromammals (e.g. rodents, shrews), characterised by their small size, short lifespan and high reproduction rate, are known for rapid adaptability to changing conditions, inhabiting all environments besides the most frigid. They form a variety of relationships with other animals as well as humans, from being prey up to mutualism, commensalism and even taming and domestication. Changes occurring short or long-term within micromammal populations can be a useful proxy for natural as well as human-induced changes. However, their remains from archaeological contexts have seldom been investigated, with a scarcity of methodological studies and incomparability of published data often discouraging research. Human impact on the environment is especially noticeable in the case of insular environments where humans are responsible for the majority of species introductions. This thesis examines a series of case studies from the Orkney islands off north-east Scotland to develop a micromammal zooarchaeological methodology and investigate the micromammal relationships with predators and human activity in this context. Specifically it has two main aims: 1) perform methodological research on obtained data to investigate established methods as well as to suggest new approaches to data analysis given what data are retrievable from studied assemblages; 2) apply the revised methodology to investigate a range of Orcadian sites, covering two main time periods of intensification of maritime contacts: Neolithic (4000 – 2000 BC) and Norse/mediaeval (600 – 1500 AD) ages. Analysis standardisation and reproducibility through coding in R is also introduced to deal with the large breath of obtained data. The study provides conclusive results, broadening the understanding of micromammal taphonomy and a range of different assemblages and deposition patterns present within and around anthropic contexts. The breath of utilizable data retrievable from micromammal assemblages is comparable with typical zooarchaeological research on the remains of bigger species, for example including information on age of death or non-predatory taphonomic factors. Spatial and contextual data, particularly, proves to be crucial for understanding the impact of dispersal and burial processes on micromammal accumulations. Moreover, the necessity for consistent sieving is confirmed, lower effort sampling or sieving regimes failing to provide representative and comparable samples. The obtained data can be effectively analysed through statistical methods, including classifying algorithms, bypassing problems encountered in the case of multiple comparisons and deposition patterns. However, the results also show that actualistic research may not be directly comparable with archaeological material without considering non-predatory taphonomic factors and their impact on data representativeness. Assemblages identified within the studied sites seem to be formed by a variety of factors. Identifiable predatory depositions could be attributed to both owls and diurnal raptors, taxa expected to be found considering modern Orkney fauna and dominant micromammal predators. Cases of non-predatory depositions included deaths of commensal species living and/or nesting within the anthropic environment, self-entrapment in anthropic features such as trenches or pits of single individuals and secondary accumulation in similar features due to dispersal. In general, each site shows multiple different patterns being present, with certain areas or context types (e.g. open/enclosed, natural/usage period/abandonment) exhibiting a predominance of a specific deposition. Intrusiveness is surprisingly rare and, where identified, is characterised by multiple intrusive species within the contexts, with singular species intrusiveness rarely being noted. Some evidence for human interaction with micromammals, direct or indirect, can be noted through additional taphonomic marks such as burning. However, a definitive interpretation of these marks, as of now, cannot be achieved

Introduction to the Content and Context of the Ratio Studiorum: Notes, Quotes and Commentaries on the Jesuit Educational Ideal

Explanatory Notes: The topic I chose for my project was Jesuit Education in Colonial Brazil as outlined in the Ratio Studiorum of 1599. The Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis lesu {Method and System of the Studies of the Society of Jesus) defined the organization, operation and teaching methodology of Jesuit secondary and higher education institutions during the greater part of the colonial period, which extended from April 1500 when the first Portuguese explorers set foot on the Brazilian shore to July 1822 when Brazil declared its independence from Portugal. The Jesuitic Period encompassed the years between 1549 when the Brazilian Province of the Society of Jesus was established to 1757 when the Order was expelled from Brazil and its colleges closed by edict of the Portuguese Crown. During this period, the Society\u27s colleges dominated the educational landscape. The Ratio Studiorum was a document of broad intent and universal application. Its rules applied to all Jesuit institutions in European countries and their colonies. The expectation of the Society was that its teaching members would faithfully follow the rules prescribed by the document and carry on instruction by its established methods. Farrell (1970) notes that the Ratio was in good part a manual for teachers, who were expected to follow carefully the rules of their respective classes (p. 132). The expectation of fidelity to the Ratio also applied to Brazilian Jesuits. This obligation suggests that its pedagogical guidelines were implemented in Brazil. The goal of the project was to organize and present information about the content and context of the Ratio Studiorum. The content consists of the origin, policies and procedures of the curricula and pedagogy of the tiered Jesuit educational system as expounded in the Ratio. The context refers to authors, publications and intellectual traditions that directly or indirectly influenced the Jesuit Ideal of Education. Given the vast amount of information and diversity of opinions about the history of the Society of Jesus and its educational activities, this compendium is offered as a modest introduction to the Ratio Studiorum. A relatively small number of items of information (i.e. entries) are presented in this work. While more material could have been included, I selected information that was useful in pursuing my research interests and in satisfying my curiosity

Islam and science :a study of major perspectives.

To our knowledge, there exists no work that deals exclusively with the theme of our research problem. However, there is no dearth of literature that deals with various aspects of Islam and science. The holy Qur’ān, primarily the Book of Hidāyah, is replete with āyāt that provide broader framework on various natural phenomenon and scientific facts. In a number of Ahadith-i-Nabwi (S.A.W.S) one can derive sufficient inspiration for scientific enquiry. We shall, here, precisely refer to some prominent works that touch upon directly or indirectly some of the aspects of the problem under investigation in the present work

De la cigale et la fourmi au lion et au-delà: Introduction

Poissons qui grimpent aux arbres, cigognes qui prennent soin de leurs parents… A l’ère prémoderne, les textes et les arts visuels forment un fabuleux bestiaire qui révèle l’inventivité et la richesse de la réflexion sur les animaux. Les études de ce volume vous font découvrir l’animal dans tous ses états : est-il une simple image anthropomorphique de l’homme ? Un modèle à suivre ? Ou même un être autonome, égal ou supérieur à l’homme ? Explorant une diversité de textes – fables, poésie, roman, récits de voyage, emblèmes – et de médias visuels – peinture, tapisserie, bijouterie, ce volume montre les fructueux échanges prémodernes entre l’histoire naturelle et les arts. En interrogeant implicitement la nécessité de dépasser l’anthropocentrisme et l’anthropomorphisme régnants, il s’inscrit dans les nouvelles tendances de la critique culturelle.Fish climbing trees, storks taking care of their parents… Premodern textual and visual culture presents us with a fabulous bestiary that reveals ingenious and rich reflections on the animal kingdom. The studies united in this volume will allow you to discover animals in all their possible states: are they simple anthropomorphic images of man? Models to follow? Or autonomous beings, equal or even superior to man? By exploring a large diversity of texts – fables, poetry, novels, travel narratives, emblematic works – and visual media – paintings, tapestries, jewellery, this richly illustrated volume displays the fruitful premodern exchanges between natural history and culture. It follows new trends in cultural criticism by implicitly interrogating the need to move beyond the reigning paradigms of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism.Modern and Contemporary Studie

Machine Learning Algorithm for the Scansion of Old Saxon Poetry

Several scholars designed tools to perform the automatic scansion of poetry in many languages, but none of these tools deal with Old Saxon or Old English. This project aims to be a first attempt to create a tool for these languages. We implemented a Bidirectional Long Short-Term Memory (BiLSTM) model to perform the automatic scansion of Old Saxon and Old English poems. Since this model uses supervised learning, we manually annotated the Heliand manuscript, and we used the resulting corpus as labeled dataset to train the model. The evaluation of the performance of the algorithm reached a 97% for the accuracy and a 99% of weighted average for precision, recall and F1 Score. In addition, we tested the model with some verses from the Old Saxon Genesis and some from The Battle of Brunanburh, and we observed that the model predicted almost all Old Saxon metrical patterns correctly misclassified the majority of the Old English input verses