Papers by Matteo Valleriani
Scientific Visual Representations in History, ed. by M. Valleriani, G. Giannini, E. Giannetto, 2023
Perspectives on Science
A corpus of 360 distinct early modern printed editions (from 1472 to 1650) containing Johannes de... more A corpus of 360 distinct early modern printed editions (from 1472 to 1650) containing Johannes de Sacrobosco’s Tractatus de sphaera is “dissected” into a corpus of 540 text-parts, 241 of them re-occurring at least once. Through the exploration of the data, we recognized a relevant position for four anonymous authors in their social network. We demonstrate that the text-parts originally assigned to the anonymous authors were authored or edited by Georg Rheticus. By means of data analysis, we conclusively establish that Rheticus profoundly impacted the content of such textbooks for the introductory class in geocentric astronomy all over Europe between 1538 and 1629.
Journal of Imaging
Recent advances in object detection facilitated by deep learning have led to numerous solutions i... more Recent advances in object detection facilitated by deep learning have led to numerous solutions in a myriad of fields ranging from medical diagnosis to autonomous driving. However, historical research is yet to reap the benefits of such advances. This is generally due to the low number of large, coherent, and annotated datasets of historical documents, as well as the overwhelming focus on Optical Character Recognition to support the analysis of historical documents. In this paper, we highlight the importance of visual elements, in particular illustrations in historical documents, and offer a public multi-class historical visual element dataset based on the Sphaera corpus. Additionally, we train an image extraction model based on YOLO architecture and publish it through a publicly available web-service to detect and extract multi-class images from historical documents in an effort to bridge the gap between traditional and computational approaches in historical studies.
Datenbank-Spektrum
The Sphere project stands at the intersection of the humanities and information sciences. The pro... more The Sphere project stands at the intersection of the humanities and information sciences. The project aims to better understand the evolution of knowledge in the early modern period by studying a collection of 359 textbook editions published between 1472 and 1650 which were used to teach geocentric cosmology and astronomy at European universities. The relatively large size of the corpus at hand presents a challenge for traditional historical approaches, but provides a great opportunity to explore such a large collection of historical data using computational approaches. In this paper, we present a review of the different computational approaches, used in this project over the period of the last three years, that led to a better understanding of the dynamics of knowledge transfer and transformation in the early modern period.
Histories
This article outlines the state of digital perspectives in historical research, some of the metho... more This article outlines the state of digital perspectives in historical research, some of the methods and tools in use by digital historians, and the possible or even necessary steps in the future development of the digital approach. We begin by describing three main computational approaches: digital databases and repositories, network analysis, and Machine Learning. We also address data models and ontologies in the larger context of the demand for sustainability and linked research data. The section is followed by a discussion of the (much needed) standards and policies concerning data quality and transparency. We conclude with a consideration of future scenarios and challenges for computational research.
Histories, Nov 9, 2022
This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative... more This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY
Publishing Sacrobosco’s De sphaera in Early Modern Europe
Paratexts, such as dedication letters or epigrams, in early modern printed books can be used by h... more Paratexts, such as dedication letters or epigrams, in early modern printed books can be used by historians to situate a book’s production in its institutional and social context. We depart from the general assumption that two publishers or printers were in a relation of awareness of each other if they printed and put on the market two different editions that contain at least one identical paratext. In this paper, we analyze the circulation of the paratexts among the 359 editions of the “Sphaera corpus.” First, we discuss the available data, the conditions to build a social network, and the latter’s characteristics. Second, we interpret the results—potential relationships among printers and publishers—from a historical point of view and, at the same time, discuss the sorts of potential relationships that this method can disclose. Third, we corroborate the historical results among different approaches, namely by using editions’ fingerprints and by investigating the book production of ...
HoST - Journal of History of Science and Technology
The ultimate objective of this work is to demonstrate that it is possible to reconsider the emerg... more The ultimate objective of this work is to demonstrate that it is possible to reconsider the emergence of modern science as a process of disintegration of the quadrivium, which was considered a stable scheme for the organization of knowledge. The argument considers the quadrivium according to the Boethian systematization that was used to organize the curricula of the late medieval universities. This argument follows the development of each of its disciplines and illustrates the practical turn they underwent. The period between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries is explored, and shows that during this period, the quadrivium potentially included a fifth autonomous discipline, calendric. The article concludes by describing epistemological considerations to the mechanisms of disintegration of knowledge structures.
Person und Wissen. Bilanz und Perspektive, 2022
Reviews in History. Peer reviewed Online Journal of the Institute of Historical Research of the School of Advanced Study, 2011
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Papers by Matteo Valleriani