Moral geometry in Restoration Ireland: Samuel Foley’s ‘Computatio universalis’ (1684) and the science of colonisation
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Despite the importance of the new science in the colonisation of Stuart Ireland, and the many Irish links to major figures in the Scientific Revolution, these connections remain relatively little studied outside of major episodes such as the Down Survey. This article examines a much smaller project, the ‘Computatio Universalis’ (1684) of Church of Ireland clergyman (later bishop of Down and Connor) Samuel Foley (1655–1695). Submitted to the Dublin Philosophical Society in 1684 as an attempt to ‘to demonstrate a universal standard’ of value, Foley’s project was in fact a guide to the achievement of ‘happiness’ through the careful stewardship of time and wealth. Foley’s project recalls earlier Christian humanist and Protestant concern with stewardship, however, and also reflects seventeenth-century economic writers’ and moral reformers’ concern with avoiding idleness. In the context of Restoration Ireland, however, it can also be seen more specifically as a project harnessing new methods of quantification for the cultural maintenance of a ruling Protestant elite historically threatened by degeneration in a colonial setting, as well as a reflection of Protestant anxieties about the Catholic church’s control over time.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.003 | 0.006 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.043 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.006 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".