Bibliographic record
Abstract
Using mostly English sources of the witch hunt era, this article demonstrates that the “fragmentation of Renaissance occultism” argued by John Henry and others involved redefining the term “superstition.” At the start of the witch hunt era, superstition was the antonym to religion; by the 1620s, when the witch hunt peaked, Francis Bacon was presenting his new philosophy as the antonym to superstition and its twin idolatry. This change in the signification of superstition was causally linked to the devil, who was both master and goal of all superstition and idolatry. Superstition was redefined and the devil was rethought as aspects of the same process, as critics of the witch hunt concluded that it was superstition to believe the devil could affect the natural order. The early stages of this redefinition drew on a concept from early classical natural philosophy that has been labelled “double determination” by G. E. R. Lloyd. Eventually the expanded concept of superstition became the counterfoil to the new philosophy. Employant principalement des sources de la période de la chasse aux sorcières, cet article démontre que la « fragmentation de l’occultisme de la Renaissance », soutenu par John Henry et d’autres, impliquait une redéfinition du terme « superstition ». Au début de la période de la chasse aux sorcières, superstition était antonyme de religion. Dès les années 1620, au summum de la chasse aux sorcières, Francis Bacon présentait sa nouvelle philosophie comme l’antonyme de la superstition et de l’idolâtrie qui lui associée. Ce changement dans la signification de la superstition était lié au diable, qui était à la fois maître et objectif de toute superstition et idolâtrie. La superstition est redéfinie et le diable repensé comme aspects du même processus, les critiques de la chasse aux sorcières ayant conclu qu’il était superstitieux de croire que le diable pouvait influencer l’ordre naturel. Les premières étapes de cette redéfinition s’inspiraient d’un concept de la philosophie naturelle antique intitulée « double determination » par G. E. R. Lloyd. Finalement, le concept élargi de superstition est devenu la souche de la nouvelle philosophie.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.020 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| 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".