The Reconfiguration of Eighteenth-Century Scottish Historiography: Dialogues Between the Present and the Past
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Changes occurred to the writing of History in eighteenth-century Scotland.Dissatisfied with traditional historical priorities, eighteenth-century Scottish historians changed the focus of their writing to reflect what they felt was more relevant to contemporary sensibilities, giving new importance to the social aspects of daily life, the inward life of the sentiments, and the history of manners.The long-standing historiographical model of the classical tradition, which had given precedence to the history of kings, public affairs and the political, gave way to a variety of new historical genres.This refocusing of historiographical emphasis was a response to a vibrant commercial society, to the era's social interests, to the period's predilection for delicate sensibilities and refined feelings, and to a burgeoning middle class.One of these new genres of historical writing was called conjectural history.A uniquely inventive eighteenth-century discursive form, conjectural history was unlike traditional history in methodology, and was differentiated by its ability to surmount traditional history's intrinsic boundaries.Conjectural history inferred and speculated, as it strove to better understand the fundamental principles of human nature.Based on these changes to historical writing, this study asks a methodological question, and it looks at several different examples of the various historical genres being written at this time.Strahan, David Hume, affirms his century's and Scotland's predilection for history, writing: "I believe this is the historical Age, and this the historical Nation." 2 Dissatisfied with Neoclassical historical priorities eighteenth-century Scottish historians enlarged the range, and changed the focus of their writing of history to reflect contemporary sensibilities, giving new importance to sentiments, manners, and the daily lives of the people.3 The history of monarchies and the political, the "Great Man Theory," 4 although still being written, obligatorily gave way to a number of historical genres, as history enlarged its field of study, becoming philosophical history, reflecting its new scope.5 It had become evident to eighteenth-century historians, with David Hume being prominent among them, that what occurred to ordinary people on a daily basis had a barely perceptible, but profound effect on what had been the subject of traditional history, kings, great men, and the political.We see this belief reflected in Hume's The History of England: From the Invasion of Julius Caesar to The Revolution of 1688, where he combines the long-established historical form with new priorities.The long-standing historiographical model of the classical tradition, which since Thucydides had giving precedence to the history of kings, public affairs and the political, gave way to a variety of historical genres.6 This historiographical realignment gave new importance to 2
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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 | 0.011 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.003 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.019 | 0.032 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.014 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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".