From 14d09ba7d090bbf7d9a5f47c2a9c83de341bae29 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: Robert Alessi Date: Wed, 6 Mar 2019 15:03:01 +0100 Subject: new abstracts --- sandbox/ralessi/driscoll.tex | 33 --------------------------------- 1 file changed, 33 deletions(-) delete mode 100644 sandbox/ralessi/driscoll.tex (limited to 'sandbox/ralessi/driscoll.tex') diff --git a/sandbox/ralessi/driscoll.tex b/sandbox/ralessi/driscoll.tex deleted file mode 100644 index 105a9fd..0000000 --- a/sandbox/ralessi/driscoll.tex +++ /dev/null @@ -1,33 +0,0 @@ -Attributing inscriptions to masons on the basis of their style is -useful for dating and reconstructing texts. A team of computer -scientists, in collaboration with the epigrapher Stephen Tracy, has -developed digital methods to quantify letter shapes, which can then be -compared statistically across texts to determine likely -authorship. Promisingly, the results have so far agreed entirely with -Tracy’s own attributions. Digital stylometry, however, must not be -fetishized as a fountain of “essentially more objective,” “hard -evidence” or of “correct and unambiguous” facts (Papaodysseus et -al. 2007: 749; Tracy and Papaodysseus 2009: 101; Panagopoulos et -al. 2009: 1404; also see Tracy 2003: xviii). Computerization does -eliminate the inconsistencies of human perception and enable great -precision, but any promises of scientific objectivity should be -scrutinized. This paper attempts to provide such scrutiny by advancing -three sets of claims. First, epigraphy possesses a troubled history -with supposedly objective criteria: the now-discredited -three-bar-sigma dating rule, for example, held the field in thrall for -much of the twentieth centurybefore being disproved (Chambers et -al. 1990); the episode’s clear moral is that we should be skeptical -about other, similar claims to objectivity. Second, comparison with -the connoisseurship of Athenian pottery underscores the relative -poverty of epigraphical connoisseurship: Tracy is the only recent -Hellenist to devote sustained effort to identifying epigraphic hands, -resulting, inter alia, in no robust scholarly consensus on the -criteria or standards of judgment. Finally—and most important—major -epistemological issues simply remain unconsidered. Essentially, -Tracy’s method has been refined into a set of algorithms. But the fact -that analysis takes place in a computer does not guarantee that the -method is correct, nor does it make its results “objective” in any -deep sense. The method and its calibration remain exercises in human -judgment, grounded ultimately in our visual experiences. Digital -imaging calls for reinvigorated, updated engagement with conceptions -of style and connoisseurship, not their repression. -- cgit v1.2.3