Annotated bibliography

This major two volume book is particularly meaningful in our context because it articulates explicitly, if within a pre-digital setting, the goals that I have set for our 4banks project. Adler in particular (as the author of the preface), was as if prescient of the great potential that digitality would allow us realize shortly after his endeavor, and with a vengeance, we might say.

The preface deals with four topics:

1. The Syntopicon as a reference book.
2. The Syntopicon as a book to be read.
3. The Syntopicon as an instrument of liberal education.
4. The Syntopicon as an instrument of discovery and research.

A set of excerpts

final sentence of preface: «Research. Because the method of this research, like the method which produced the Syntopicon, would be thoroughly dialectical in character, the intellectual summation which would be its product could be called a Summa Dialectica.»

«something more than a collection of books.» p. xi

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

«the problem of how to read a number of related books in relation to one another and read them in such a way that the complementary and conflicting things they have to say about a common subject are clearly grasped» (p. xii)

«Second, to the point about the separateness and uniqueness of authors. This comes down to saying that if Aristotle, for example, walked into our office, attired no doubt in robes and accompanied by an interpreter who knew both modern English and classical Greek, we would not be able to understand him or he us. We simply do not believe it. Doubtless Aristotle would be amazed at some of the things he saw, but we are quite confident that within ten minutes we could, if we wanted to, be engaged in a philosophical discussion of problems that we shared. There might be recurrent difficulties about certain conceptions, but as soon as we recognized them as such, we could resolve them.

If that is possible ( and we do not really think anyone would deny it) , then it is not impossible for one book to “talk” to another through the medium of an interpreter–namely, you, the syntopical reader. Care is required, of course, and you should know both “languages”-that is, both books-as well as you can. But the problem is not insuperable, and it is simply foolish to suggest that it is.» p.334

DISCOURSE !!!

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

«The paper aims to present the first results of the research cluster “Reassessing the Legacy of Victorian Orientalists”, which is ongoing in the framework of the GRISSO project. It is devoted to the formative phase of the scientific study of the Ancient Near East in Britain during the reign of Queen Victoria, mainly focusing on the archaeologist and diplomat Austen Henry Layard (1817-1894) and the clergyman and philologist Archibald Henry Sayce (1845-1933). The research, conducted by S. Ermidoro, S. Alaura and M. Bonechi, is based on entirely unpublished and, in some cases, hitherto unknown archival materials» (Author’s abstract).

DOI

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

Serving as a manifesto for the work program of a research project devoted to the history of “Oriental” studies, the volume gathers contributions aimed at analyzing “the history of archaeological, philological and historical studies of the Ancient Near East and their reception in contemporary and modern society by establishing cross-cultural academic dialogue and international cooperation” (p. 7). The emphasis is on the gathering of data and materials as found in the archives, including especially private documents (texts and images) that are otherwise often disregarded.

The goal is to beyond just provinding information: “As a counterbalance to abstract theoretical constructs, the archive offers the weight of events that, though they may be small, cannot be ignored. Indeed, it is not unusual for archival documents to yield information that has not been reflected in the published literature. When we dig around in the archives, facts come to light that are unknown to us, unexpected, sometimes problematic, perhaps contradictory” (p. 8).

Out of this can come a “synopticon of Oriental Studies” which has as its “ultimate destination” the pursuit of a history of ideas beyond the chosen disciplinary limits (p. 8). [The notion of “syntopicon,” borrowed from Adler, is in line with the goals of our websites.]

The book is divided in three parts.

1. The practice or archaeology: excavations and institutions – see especially Micale 2021 Images
2. The making of philologies: from unity to specialization – see especially Alaura 2021 Insights
3. Oriental studies and society – see especially Nadali 2021 Onstage

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2022

SUMMARY TO BE WRITTEN

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

«In The Gutenberg Elegies, nationally renowned critic Sven Birkerts powerfully argues that we are living in a state of intellectual emergency – an emergency caused by our willingness to embrace new technologies at the expense of the printed word. As we rush to get “on line”, as we make the transition from book to screen, says Birkerts, we are turning against some of the core premises of humanism – indeed, we are putting the idea of individualism itself under threat. The printed page and the circuit driven information technologies are not kindred – for Birkerts they represent fundamentally opposed forces. In their inevitable confrontation our deepest values will be tested. Birkerts begins his exploration from the reader’s perspective, first in several highly personal accounts of his own passion for the book, then in a suite of essays that examines what he calls “the ulterior life of reading”. Against this, Birkerts sets out the contours of the transformed landscape. In his highly provocative essay “Into the Electronic Millenium” and in meditations on CD-ROM, hypertext, and audio books, he plumbs the impact of emerging technologies on the once stable reader-writer exchange. He follows these with a look at the changing climate of criticism and literary practice. He concludes with a blistering indictment of what he sees as our willingness to strike a Faustian pact with a seductive devil» (Editor’s summary).

Some excerpts are available at the following link.

– Marco De Pietri, 2024

In A Critique of Archaeological Reason, Giorgio Buccellati presents a theory of excavation that aims at clarifying the nature of archaeology and its impact on contemporary thought. Integrating epistemological issues with methods of data collection and the role and impact of digital technology on archaeological work, the book explores digital data in order to comprehend its role in shaping meaning and understanding in archaeological excavation.

Wider description available here. See also the related companion website.

– Marco De Pietri, 2024

This paper presents many issues concerning the topic of digital publication of an excavation report. After a discussion about the very concept of “digital” and conceptual digitality, involving themes such as those of categorization and exo- and endogenous dimension of digitality (static vs. dynamic), the author moves to the presetation of the case of a browser edition offering as an example that of the Urkesh Global Record (UGR) [see here for a video on this topic]; this system allows to reach a better and dynamic data gathering, leading to this final conclusion: “Thus it is that the question of digitality becomes imperative for data gathering more than in perhaps any other case, given the necessity of having a system that maintains every single observation ever made during the excavation process. True digitality becomes then an issue that goes well beyond theory and abstraction, and becomes instead a most concrete imperative for keeping the archaeological process within the framework of an arguable analytical process.” (p. 255).

PDF available at this link

– Marco De Pietri, 2020

«A trend intrinsic to digitization is the emphasis on the fragments seen apart from the whole. Recovering the sense of this whole, understood as greater than the sum of the parts, is the major task of a properly humanistic epistemics: while certainly based on a full analytical control of the data, knowledge must strive towards an appropriation of the whole as such. A new structural approach to writing and reading websites is a step in this direction: it is based on the integration of parallel and concurrent planes, dynamically articulated within the digital medium in ways that offer a quantum leap over the spoken or the printed medium. As a result, the fragments are seen as “discoursing” with each other and with the whole within which they exist. Archaeology is seen as a privileged locus where this approach can be tested: an excavation presents us with a universe of disaggregated data, which reflect an original whole within which they had meaning. Digital discourse is thus eminently suited for recovering, through archaeological reason, the nature of this whole and thus assessing the impact it can have, humanistically, on us today» (Author’s abstract).

DOI

See full text

PDF of the English version available to staff only, with ID and PW at this link

– Marco De Pietri, 2024

«An archaeological excavation produces an enormous quantity of fragments which, disaggregated as they are in their emplacement at the moment of discovery, reflect an original whole in which they had sense and meaning. Archaeology is thus an ideal locus where to study the possibility of a digital system that not only constructs useful catalogs but also provides a narrative that develops an argument, aimed at gaining a hermeneutic access to this original whole. The paper illustrates this on the basis of the digital work done on the material from the excavations at Urkesh, one of the earliest cities in history. It serves as a concrete example of how to avoid falling into the trap of an artificial humanism, where the technique controls our approach to data and argument. It also stresses the importance of learning to “write” and “read” a website, which is then seen not just as a container of information, but as an integrated epistemic system that implements the goal of interplanarity, whereby parallel arguments develop within the framework of systemic digital discourse» (Authors’ abstract).

DOI

See full text

PDF of the English version available to staff only, with ID and PW at this link

– Marco De Pietri, 2024

“Is Google making us stupid? When Nicholas Carr posed that question in a celebrated Atlantic essay, he tapped into a well of anxiety about how the Internet is changing us. He also crystallized one of the most important debates of our time: As we enjoy the internet’s bounties, are we sacrificing our ability to read and think deeply?

With The Shallows […] Carr expands his argument into the most compelling exploration of the net’s intellectual and cultural consequences yet published. The Shallows is, writes Slate, ‘a Silent Spring for the literary mind.’

An expanded, tenth-anniversary edition of The Shallows was published in 2020. It includes an extensive new afterword that examines how smartphones and social media are influencing our thoughts and emotions.” (summary on author’s personal website.)

Book (English version) available on editor website.

Book (Italian translation) available on editor website.

Cf. also the author’s personal website.

– Giorgio Buccellati, Marco De Pietri, 2023

“Grey literature” refers to the type of informal publications such as bulletins, reports, brochures, swhich have come in much more common use with the advent of the world wide web. The introduction provides a succinct and useful review of the topic.

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

A short article, it aptly highlights the anticipation of the digital turn, as already indicated by the reference to the Kindle in the title. The text describes nicely the current digital dimension (unwittingly, perhaps, pointing to its negative effects): «Under e-readers’ influence, the linear project of book-reading – from page 1 to page 501, sequentially – has shifted to something much more chaotic, much more casual, much more accommodating to whimsy and whim.» – a good description of what happens with standard websites as found in current use.

This is described in even more specific terms as follows: «we are newly encouraged to consume our books not as long meals, but as occasional snacks: a few nibbles of Moby-Dick here, a few bites of Bossypants there»: the “long meal” is indeed the long argument

It also describes well the “planarity” of the machine: «Ramelli planned to use epicyclic gearing – a system that had at that point been used only in astronomical clocks – to ensure that the shelves bearing the wheel’s books (more than a dozen of them) would remain at the same angle no matter the wheel’s position. The seated reader could then employ either hand or foot controls to move the desired book pretty much into her (or, much more likely, his) lap.»

In a note, Garber refers to an article in the Princeton Alumni Review that incidentally contains a picture of a reconstructed bookwheel in Anthony Grafton’s office (appropriately, Grafton 1999 Footnote deals at length with the nature of the footnote).

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

Tracing the origin of footnotes backwards – from the recent development by Ranke in the late 19^th century to the distant ancestor of exact documentation in the 4^th century – Grafton delivers a “history of the footnotes that actually appear in the margins of modern historical works” (p. vii).

Although not changing historical writing significantly, the practice of citing authorities is traceable to legal writers in Late Antiquity. By the late 15^th century, Athanasius Kircher’s research has shown “an encyclopedic willingness to accommodate the incongruous and the alien, one that allowed many voices to speak, and many alphabets to appear, on the same page” (p. 153). In the late 17^th century, the prevalence of footnotes in historical writing was established in Pierre Bayle’s Dictionaire historique et critique, in which, by compiling a “vast accumulation of passages from other texts, of exegesis, summary, and rebuttal,” he “devised and defended a double form of narrative” that “both stated final results and explained the journey necessary to reach them” (pp. 199-200).

This eventually built up to Ranke’s alleged “invention” of footnotes, with which Grafton started his book. The word invention is in quotes, because, as Grafton’s survey has shown, Ranke formed the new historical writing technique by “snatch-and-grab raid[ing] on the glittering shop-windows of other disciplines” (p. 230). Seeing footnotes as a way to present the process of arguments link by link and straddling knowledge from various contexts altogether like tree roots linking nodes to nodes to all directions, Grafton revealed that the idea of cross-referencing is not a modern invention and came to a realization — he surely wanted his readers to discover it as well — that “[o]ne who actually follows historians’ footnotes back to their sources, […] taking the time to trace the deep, twisted roots of the blasted tree of scholarly polemic, may well discover much more of human interest than one would expect buried in the acid subsoil” (p. 13).

– Zichan Wang, 2022

«This dissertation presents an original methodology for taking into account a large amount of textual information in the production of historical interpretations. Recently developed and rapidly improving methodologies for representing text in terms of mathematical vectors have opened up new roads which promise to help researchers face the problem of information overload by augmenting the capacities of the human scholar. One such “intellectual prosthetic” is herein described, implemented, and used

(from Author’s summary).

A PDF version of the full summary can be downloaded at this link.

[abbreviate summary and move the full text to excerpts ? - ZI825 mDP]

– Marco De Pietri, 2024

SUMMARY TO BE WRITTEN

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2022

SUMMARY TO BE WRITTEN

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

«In the libraries in Berlin it is possible to come upon a surprising book dating to 1944 and entitled Der Orient in deutscher Forschung. This volume describes the proceedings of a conference organized by the Berliner Orientalisten in 1942. Among the lectures concerning the various fields of German Orientalistik research, the paper of Julius Jordan on the “Leistungen und Aufgaben der deutschen Ausgrabungen im vorderen Orient” is particularly interesting. He asserts that German involvment in the scientific research on the ancient Near East strongly determined the development of European Orientalistik. In Jordan’s opinion, this occurred not only because of both the archaeological results and the high value of German publications, but also because of the highly sophisticated excavation techniques the German archaeologists developed» (from Authors’ Introduction on p. 405).

Full volume

– Marco De Pietri, 2024

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

The Science History Institute website offers a reproduction of the original 1588 publication; several other reprints are available, e. g., one from Leipzig in 1620.

The book contains 195 designs of machines, including the bookwheel. The pertinent Wikipedia article is particularly well informed and illustrated. See also

– Giorgio Buccellati, 2024

«From the author of Proust and the Squid, a lively, ambitious, and deeply informative epistolary book that considers the future of the reading brain and our capacity for critical thinking, empathy, and reflection as we become increasingly dependent on digital technologies.

This book comprises a series of letters Wolf writes to us – her beloved readers – to describe her concerns and her hopes about what is happening to the reading brain as it unavoidably changes to adapt to digital mediums.

Wolf draws on neuroscience, literature, education, technology, and philosophy and blends historical, literary, and scientific facts with down-to-earth examples and warm anecdotes to illuminate complex ideas that culminate in a proposal for a biliterate reading brain. Provocative and intriguing, Reader, Come Home is a roadmap that provides a cautionary but hopeful perspective on the impact of technology on our brains and our most essential intellectual capacities – and what this could mean for our future» (from Author’s personal website).

– Marco De Pietri, 2024