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Old 11-29-2006, 05:23 PM   #1
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Default Historiography of antiquity and hierarchical vs relational database technology

This may appear to be slightly divergent from the issues
largely discussed in this forum, but please bear with me
for a moment while I attempt to specifically examine an
aspect and utility of modern database technology, and to
make a small point.

The difference between what is termed "hierarchical" and
"relational" technology may not seem to be in any way
related to the historiography of antiquity and late antiquity
as considered by the scholars of BC&H. But IMO it is ...

With respect to modern database technology, the term
hierarchical essentially means that all references are taken
from one (possibly more, but finite and fixed) frame of
reference. This is the old way of looking at things, because
under such a paradigm, it is virtually impossible to be able
to examine the contents of your database from the persective
of anything contained within your database, outside the
primary indexes provided by the hierarchy.

On the other hand, a relational (technology) database has the
necessary ability (given the knowledge) to be able to deliver
examination of the contents of that database by virtually any
of the elements of the database (not just the "keys", as with
the above).

Having said all of this, I point out that all the standard BC&H
databases are of the former type (ie: hierarchical) even though
(such as PK's trinity of databases) may run on relational technology.

This is so because the database is specifically for "things related
to christianity", and all references within these databases, are
securely BOLTED to the one main hierarchical structure of the
(essentially) Eusebian chronology, as presented in HE.

Nothing else is generally presented. No Roman emperors, no pagan
philosophers (either neopythagorean, neoplotinist, stoic, etc), no
Roman emperors (unless they purportedly made reference to the
"tribe of christians"), no administrators, governors, prefects (unless
they etc etc), no non-christian writers, authors of works, no non
christian poets, mathematicians, proto-scientists, etc, etc, etc.

You can see that the standard (hierarchical) christian presentation
of knowledge is obviously not relational. How then can anyone
realistically expect to be able to form a relational picture of the
development of the history of christianity without this "other" side?

Therefore (particularly Peter Kirby, but others here doing the same
or contemplating the same sort of thing), consider this message
very long and with sufficient objectivity to understand just what
it is I am attempting to communicate.

At the moment, the majority of people, as a result of our conditioned
historical belief system have been brought up to understand and
view the world (and its history) through a grossly exaggerated and
hierarchical historiographical framework which is essentially "felt" to
be "christian" and "right" and "authoritative" and "true".

We are now operating under a very hierarchical historiography.
It is essentially Eusebian, at its technical specifications. This
is not the optimum, by any stretch of the imagination.

In order to be "true" and "objective" and "engender tools and views
to perceive what is "right" (all these words by the way are to be
applied and relate to HISTORY, and its scholarly study, not anything
else !!!!!!), we will obviously need to implement a far more relational
viewpoint on antiquity.

How to construct and implement such an animal?

Simple, start pumping into the "christian-related" databases details
and citations (to literature first, then other things) which are not
related to christianity (see list below), and gather these texts at
the same time together.


* (pagan) Roman emperors
* (pagan) neopythagorean philosophers
* (pagan) neoplotinist philosophers
* (pagan) stoic philosophers
* (pagan) historians
* administrators, governors, prefects of the empire
* non-christian writers and authors of works
* non-christian poets, mathematicians & proto-scientists
* etc
* etc
* archeological citations
* coins
* statues
* art
* inscriptions
* carbon dating citations
* etc



Only in this way (IMO) will we eventually begin to understand that
the history of antiquity, and late antiquity, as currently studied by
the scholars of BC&H, is not the thing we think it to be.

Thank you for your attention.
As you were,



Pete Brown
Eusebian Chronology presented in a Relational Context
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Old 11-29-2006, 05:52 PM   #2
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I work in IT, and I work with databases, and I have no idea what you mean. Am I right to say that a summary of your post would read "we need to think outside the box"?
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Old 11-29-2006, 06:27 PM   #3
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Expanding the database to include the non-Christian, the non-Jewish, or the non-Latin would not make the database a different structure. It would just make it a bigger database.

I plan to make the database and the software to access it sufficiently general to power without modification the "Early Christian Writings," "Early Jewish Writings," "Early Latin Writings," and "Early Greek Writings" websites, which are niche by nature and design.

I also have a Project X in the planning stages that will not be niche in its content like the above four, but first I have to refine what I've already started.

I am also obligated to complete work on Errancy Web before I proceed to work on Project X.

Those who have an interest in Project X may PM me about it, with a message expressing a simple NDA ("I won't tell a soul about Project X.").

regards,
Peter Kirby
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Old 11-29-2006, 06:39 PM   #4
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GakuseiDon View Post
I work in IT, and I work with databases, and I have no idea what you mean. Am I right to say that a summary of your post would read "we need to think outside the box"?
Correct, but more, I have provided a physical mechanism
by which (historical) things which are now outside the square
can be brought inside the square with everything else.

Once a sufficient mass of non-christian historical things are
thus brought into a relational aspect with things belonging
to the christian (or rather "ecclesiastical") history, there will
become increasingly apparent at least two things:

(1) the relation of the ecclesiastic history to the history.
(2) the relation of the history to the ecclesiastical history.

At the moment, we are boxed in by conventions which are
hierarchical. This aspect of databases (ie: hierarchical vs
relational) was essentially navigated during the early 80's
and from the 90's the RDBMS (relational systems) is the
norm. If you got into IT after the 80's, you may not have
appreciated the evolution. Here is a very brief (and quite
tangential) History of the RDBMS.

Hope this explains what I wanted to communicate.
Best wishes,


Pete
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Old 11-29-2006, 06:48 PM   #5
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Kirby View Post
Expanding the database to include the non-Christian, the non-Jewish, or the non-Latin would not make the database a different structure. It would just make it a bigger database.

I plan to make the database and the software to access it sufficiently general to power without modification the "Early Christian Writings," "Early Jewish Writings," "Early Latin Writings," and "Early Greek Writings" websites, which are niche by nature and design.

I also have a Project X in the planning stages that will not be niche in its content like the above four, but first I have to refine what I've already started.

I am also obligated to complete work on Errancy Web before I proceed to work on Project X.

Those who have an interest in Project X may PM me about it, with a message expressing a simple NDA ("I won't tell a soul about Project X.").

regards,
Peter Kirby

Interesting projects PK.

You can see that in the end one database will house the
christian, the jewish, the greek, the latin, etc. It will
contain all the authors of antiquity and enable their
categorisation, etc. (even the Stoics, etc).

You are heading the right direction ... keep going.
And best wishes,



Pete
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Old 12-03-2006, 10:54 AM   #6
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The technical term here is "database schema".

What data elements are contained within the
database, how they are to be defined, and how
they are to be related to one another.

If you work with databases then the "schema"
of the database is the thing being discussed here.


FYI.
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Old 12-04-2006, 08:45 AM   #7
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Hierarchical versus relational is no more of a problem. All databases are now relational, if you use a standard software.

The problem is the definition of the Tables which will contain all your data, and simultaneously, the definition of the Questions which can be asked.

You have already built a table of Persons,
And another Table : Qualifications of these Persons, religion, function :
* (pagan) Roman emperors
* (pagan) neopythagorean philosophers
* (pagan) neoplotinist philosophers
* (pagan) stoic philosophers
* (pagan) historians
* administrators, governors, prefects of the empire
* non-christian writers and authors of works
* non-christian poets, mathematicians & proto-scientists
* etc...

In your list, you assign one date (year) to a person. Is it sufficient ? What is its exact meaning ? Birth date ? Death date ? Beginning of reign (emperors) ? You are going to find problems with dates, because in ancient history, dates are usually very imprecise.

This table of Persons does not contain the description of events concerning a Person.

Then, you shall create another Table for :

* archeological citations
* coins
* statues
* art
* inscriptions
* carbon dating citations
* etc

All these data will be connected to at least one Person of the Table of Persons.

Possibly, you will need a Table of Towns, a Table of Countries, a Table of Regions ?
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Old 12-04-2006, 09:09 AM   #8
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I did my graduate work on database design. My final paper was on non-hierarchic classification. I ultimately came to the conclusion that the optimization of the abstract structure was secondary to the question of content. It's like someone (John Dvorak?) said about parallel computing: processing speed and efficiency are great, but what is it that is being processed? So I began my search for the "primum datum", the one bit of information which, in considering the entire history of mankind, stands as the most far-reaching. There is no doubt that the answer is Christ. This is true on a strictly empirical basis. After all, who is the most cited person in history? So my point is that it is precisely relational data structures that reveal this. Just as all roads lead to Rome, so do all data streams lead to Christ.
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Old 12-04-2006, 03:06 PM   #9
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Thanks for your contribution Huon ...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Huon View Post
Hierarchical versus relational is no more of a problem. All databases are now relational, if you use a standard software.
This is correct, from the technological perspective.

Quote:
The problem is the definition of the Tables which will contain all your data, and simultaneously, the definition of the Questions which can be asked.

You have already built a table of Persons,
My advice would be to call this table Authors of Antiquity
or simply "AUTHORS" for the following reason: We obtain our data
for non-authors only by means of persons who are in fact authors,
either of texts, coins, inscriptions, etc (see RecordType below).

Those who wish to have an entry for Jesus Christ in this database
may do so because we are assured by Eusebius that not only wrote
a letter in response to King Agbar (in Syriac), but that Eusebius
found this letter in the archives while he was preparing his new
"Ecclesiastical History" and chronology of the bishops of Rome,
and personally translated it to the Greek. Thus JC is an author
of antiquity, and rightfully deserves his own entry on this basis.

Quote:
And another Table : Qualifications of these Persons, religion, function :
* (pagan) Roman emperors
* (pagan) neopythagorean philosophers
* (pagan) neoplotinist philosophers
* (pagan) stoic philosophers
* (pagan) historians
* administrators, governors, prefects of the empire
* non-christian writers and authors of works
* non-christian poets, mathematicians & proto-scientists
* etc...
My advice here is that these are categories, which
will of course have sub-categories. The aim is to sort out
the different strands in antiquity which were purported to
have coexisted in the three centuries (1,2,3) of the pre-
Nicene Epoch.

This is a category table only, expandable, fluid as required.

Quote:
In your list, you assign one date (year) to a person. Is it sufficient ? What is its exact meaning ? Birth date ? Death date ? Beginning of reign (emperors) ? You are going to find problems with dates, because in ancient history, dates are usually very imprecise.
Too true. I have elsewhere commented on this problem, a very
real one, with some authors being variously placed over 2 or 3
centuries and with texts, the same. My advise would be to have
a separate field (numeric years) representative of the ERROR-BAR
of years involved in the two dates cited for the birth and death
of the author (Record Type = "A" for author)

A separate date of composition (with a separate ERROR-BAR) is
separately allocated to the text (Record Type = "T" for text).

Quote:
This table of Persons does not contain the description of events concerning a Person.
My advice here may appear counter-intuitive, but here it is.
In the initial database load, we totally ignore all events but
those of the authors, texts, coins, and all other historical
record types defined below.

My reason for this is that the EVENTS are to be described in
terms of the detailed citations available to this first level of
data, and need not be separately recorded. The events in
theory should be reconstructable from the texts (and other
historical record types) which are registered to the database.

Stay with the foundational sources until you are forced to
depart therefrom. Here are the foundational sources of
history, as I perceive them to be at this stage:

Quote:
Then, you shall create another Table for :

* archeological citations
* coins
* statues
* art
* inscriptions
* carbon dating citations
* grafitti
* etc
These are the Record Types for the source historical records
of humanity. This too is simply a relatively small reference
table, in which in addition to the above, the following two:

* author
* text

Every record in the database relates to either one archeological citation,
coin, statue, art work, inscription, carbon dating citation, grafitti, author
or text. The sum total of all rows in this database represents all we
have managed to have ascertained about our common antiquity.


Quote:
All these data will be connected to at least one Person of the Table of Persons.
Yes, each of the historical record sources had at least one author,
either known or not known to us, and this correlation between the
record and its author is of fundamental importance to the integrity
of the endpoint of the system. It could be called "AUTHORS-WORKS"
representing art, text, coins, etc

Quote:
Possibly, you will need a Table of Towns, a Table of Countries, a Table of Regions ?
These are good suggestions, expandable to include the changing
of the names of geographical names and boundaries over the time
period and probably inclusive of their modern day geographical
counterparts, if appropriate.

Finally, the system needs to specifically have the means by which
an interpolated text is (objectively) indentified and
further referenced. My advice at this stage is to simply have some
column attached to each record type "HAS BEEN INTERPOLATED?"
with a binary value, to record the possibility of investigating the
consequences.

A further TEXT subtype would be used to separately record the
slab of text out of the original text which, starting with the most
probable interpolation issues (such as the TF) working down to
the least cited interpolation issue (eg: M.Antoninus' reference to
christians in his Meditations).

Being a separate record, it will therefore also exist in the
AUTHORS-WORKS correlation table, indentifying one or
more possible interpolator (author).


To conclude, the above schema because of its simplicity is
conducive to a rapid load of extensive data by the harvesting
of a series of already extant public domain data sources.

Report generation from the resultant database is entirely
trivial SQL. It will be the categorisations that promote
the wealth of a very rich diversity.

The issues relevant to BC&H for the period 0-300 have ever
only been examined looking at a subset of the above database.
The BC&H traditional view has exclusively concentrated on
the texts and authors which are hierarchically related
to the category of christian authors and texts.

We need to see the whole picture.


Pete Brown
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Old 12-04-2006, 03:23 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally Posted by No Robots View Post
I did my graduate work on database design. My final paper was on non-hierarchic classification. I ultimately came to the conclusion that the optimization of the abstract structure was secondary to the question of content. It's like someone (John Dvorak?) said about parallel computing: processing speed and efficiency are great, but what is it that is being processed? So I began my search for the "primum datum", the one bit of information which, in considering the entire history of mankind, stands as the most far-reaching. There is no doubt that the answer is Christ. This is true on a strictly empirical basis. After all, who is the most cited person in history? So my point is that it is precisely relational data structures that reveal this. Just as all roads lead to Rome, so do all data streams lead to Christ.
This above statement represents the classic formulation of an hierarchical
historiographical perspective if I have ever seen one, and thus should
serve to remind natural historians, and students of history, what is the
antithesis of the formulation of a relational historiographical perspective.

The relational perspective allows for the possibility that other categories
of authors have something to tell us about the world and about our
common heritage of antiquity. It allows for

* Marcus Aurelius Antoninus & Julian (pagan) Roman emperors
* Apollonius of Tyana, (pagan) neopythagorean philosophers
* Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus (pagan) neoplotinist philosophers
* [See 'Meditations'] (pagan) stoic philosophers
* Ammianus Marcellinus, Aurelius Victor, (pagan) historians
* administrators, governors, prefects of the empire
* non-christian writers and authors of works
* non-christian poets, mathematicians & proto-scientists

The relational persective allows us to explore the possibility
that the pre-Nicene epoch was a totally different place than
what we have traditionally been taught and conditioned to
believe, especially in regard to the appearance of the
fabrication of the galilaeans during that period.



Pete Brown
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