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Record W4387533798 · doi:10.1163/15700593-tat00013

(Re)defining Esotericism

2023· article· en· W4387533798 on OpenAlex

Why this work is in the frame

A frame that forgets how it found something cannot be audited. These are the routes that admitted this work.

affAt least one author lists a Canadian institution in the pinned OpenAlex snapshot.

Bibliographic record

VenueAries · 2023
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicReligious Studies and Spiritual Practices
Canadian institutionsMount Royal University
Fundersnot available
KeywordsEpistemologyMeaning (existential)Focus (optics)Context (archaeology)RealismProperty (philosophy)PhilosophySociologyHistory

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

Abstract This article moves past discussing definitions of esotericism to clarifying the nature of definition itself. After reviewing different approaches to definition, we argue that rigid definitions (which propose necessary and sufficient conditions) are problematic, and that fluid definitions (which seek to clarify, explain, teach etc.) are a better alternative. We then discuss homeostatic property cluster definitions, which are like family-resemblance definitions, but with explicit justification for the particular set of defining criteria. We propose a related but more flexible stable property cluster definition of esotericism . It is intended as a useful focus for ongoing discussion, not as a candidate for the single correct definition. Throughout the article, we contrast meaning realism and meaning antirealism (not ontological realism/antirealism), making a case that the latter is more useful in this context. We end by suggesting that our definitional approach has value for exploring both the global spread of western esotericisms and, more importantly, the extent to which esotericism intersects with the semantic fields of comparable categories in other languages and cultures.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesInsufficient payload (model declined to judge)
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Not applicable · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.892
Threshold uncertainty score0.998

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0010.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.003

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.

Opus teacher head0.057
GPT teacher head0.270
Teacher spread0.213 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it