This paper examines one of the historical antecedents of Big Data, the social physics movement. Its origins are in the scientific revolution of the 17th century in Western Europe. But it is not named as such until the middle of the 19th century, and not formally institutionalized until another hundred years later when it is associated with work by George Zipf and John Stewart. Social physics is marked by the belief that large-scale statistical measurement of social variables reveals underlying relational (...) patterns that can be explained by theories and laws found in natural science, and physics in particular. This larger epistemological position is known as monism, the idea that there is only one set of principles that applies to the explanation of both natural and social worlds. Social physics entered geography through the work of the mid-20th-century geographer William Warntz, who developed his own spatial version called “macrogeography.” It involved the computation of large data sets, made ever easier with the contemporaneous development of the computer, joined with the gravitational potential model. Our argument is that Warntz's concerns with numeracy, large data sets, machine-based computing power, relatively simple mathematical formulas drawn from natural science, and an isomorphism between natural and social worlds became grounds on which Big Data later staked its claim to knowledge; it is a past that has not yet passed. (shrink)

This paper points out some of the weaknesses of the traditional account of the Homeric phrase androteta kai hében and suggests instead that the entire phrase is a relatively recent creation of the tradition on the model of an *an(b)roteta kai hében. This phrase in turn has a clear Avestan cognate hauruuatata ameretata.

In 1915 a dispute over the meaning and interpretation of lines 3–4 of this poem prompted Ernst Hohl not only to propose reading ‘quo … locos’ instead of ‘quae … loca’ but also to question whether the poem really was composed by Hadrian.

In 1915 a dispute over the meaning and interpretation of lines 3–4 of this poem prompted Ernst Hohl not only to propose reading ‘quo … locos’ instead of ‘quae … loca’ (a conjecture which he rightly abandoned in his edition of theHistoria Augustafor the Teubner series in 1927) but also to question whether the poem really was composed by Hadrian.

In 1883 Alexander Enmann demonstrated the existence of ‘eine verlorene Geschichte der romischen Kaiser’. Not all of his arguments or conclusions were valid, but one fundamental postulate is undeniable: Aurelius Victor in 359/60 and Eutropius a decade later independently used a common source, a lost Kaiser geschichte of relatively brief compass. This lost work went down to the death of Constantine in 337, and traces of it can also be discovered in other writings of the late fourth century: in Festus’ (...) Breviarium, in Jerome's revision of Eusebius’ Chronicle, in the Epitome de Caesaribus—and in the HA. If the HA used the Kaisergeschichte, its composition postdates 337— as Otto Seeck stated plainly in 1890. (shrink)

Claudian's poem In Rufinum is a historical epic with at least two unusual features: the first book contains many of the standard elements of a formal invective, and the two books were composed and recited some eighteen months apart, since Book One celebrates the death of Rufinus on 27 November 395 as a very recent event, while the preface to Book Two refers explicitly to Stilicho's expedition to Greece in 397. The interval in composition is matched by a gap in (...) content: Book One treats Rufinus' career down to 393, with some forward references to 395, explicitly marked as such, while the narrative of Book Two begins from the death of Theodosius on 17 January 395 and ends with the lynching of Rufinus on 27 November 395. Claudian thus omits any account of Rufinus' activities during the campaign of Theodosius against Eugenius in 394 and the emperor's last months in Italy. Claudian's careful chronological ordering of his material is deliberate, but since it has been obscured in recent discussions of the In Rufinum, it needs to be reinstated. (shrink)

Claudian's poem In Rufinum is a historical epic with at least two unusual features: the first book contains many of the standard elements of a formal invective, and the two books were composed and recited some eighteen months apart, since Book One celebrates the death of Rufinus on 27 November 395 as a very recent event , while the preface to Book Two refers explicitly to Stilicho's expedition to Greece in 397. The interval in composition is matched by a gap (...) in content: Book One treats Rufinus' career down to 393, with some forward references to 395, explicitly marked as such , while the narrative of Book Two begins from the death of Theodosius on 17 January 395 and ends with the lynching of Rufinus on 27 November 395. Claudian thus omits any account of Rufinus' activities during the campaign of Theodosius against Eugenius in 394 and the emperor's last months in Italy. Claudian's careful chronological ordering of his material is deliberate, but since it has been obscured in recent discussions of the In Rufinum, it needs to be reinstated. (shrink)