Quantifying the Presence of Ancient Greek and Latin Classics in Early Modern Britain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This paper explores the reception of classical works in Early Modern Britain during the hand press era, between the 1470s and 1790s. It investigates canon formation, knowledge transmission, and the integration of digital archives in quantitative book history. The study quantitatively maps changing perceptions of the classical canon across time, offering a panoramic view of 'shifting canons'. The analysis is based on three data archives: the English Short Title Catalogue (ESTC), Early English Books Online (EEBO), and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO). We conclude that we can observe a “canonization” of the set of classical authors printed in Early Modern England, which is reflected in a significant loss of diversity in publications, despite a general increase of the publication of classical works. Preferences also shift, with ancient Greek authors of the early centuries gaining significantly more space in the 18th century. This finding however is balanced by the observation that the circulation of Ancient Greek editions in the original language does not increase during this time. This multidimensional approach contributes to a comprehensive understanding of the reception of Classics in Early Modern Britain, shedding light on cultural and intellectual transformations.
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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 | 0.010 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.009 | 0.013 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
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".