The Oxford Handbook of Engineering and Technology in the Classical World
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This book was designed 'to survey the role of technology in the Greek and Roman cultures and their respective technological accomplishments, from approximately the eighth century BC through the fifth century AD' [3].More specifically, contributors were asked to provide critical summaries of what the ancients achieved in particular areas, to chart the development of their technology in these cultures over the period in question, to consider the historiography of important issues in their area, and 'to help put an end to the myth of a 'technological blockage' in the classical cultures' [6].The book is not meant to be a compendium of all technological procedures, devices, and machines in the classical world [6]; but the title and size raise the expectation that it will serve as an introduction to the field as a whole, suitable both for undergraduate students and academics new to it.Generally that expectation is realized, though, as usual with this sort of volume, the level at which chapters are pitched varies considerably and some contributors stick to their brief better than others.To what extent does this volume achieve its three principal aims-to summarize what the ancients achieved, to explain how their technologies changed through antiquity, and to explode the myth of technological blockage?The answer turns out to be bound up with how far contributors have engaged with those aims.With 33 chapters over nearly 900 pages, this review would become inordinately long were every contribution to be discussed equally and therefore it, like the volume itself, will be selective in its coverage, though every contribution is acknowledged to some extent.My selection is based on the apparent relevance of the material to Aestimatio's principal audience, historians of science.
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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 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.005 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.033 | 0.010 |
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".