Worlds of Learning - Re-Connecting Scholastic Worlds

Worlds of Learning -- Re-Connecting Scholastic Worlds

Jeffrey C. Witt (Loyola University Maryland)
https://jeffreycwitt.com | jcwitt@loyola.edu
@jeffreycwitt

July 10, 2025, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK

Slide Deck: http://jeffreycwitt.com/slides/2025-07-10-leeds-connecting-worlds

https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/

## Example 1 ### Scholia and Semantic Similarity

### Document Embeddings with Doc2Vec See: Le, Quoc and Tomas Mikolov, “Distributed Representations of Sentences and Documents,” (2014) https://arxiv.org/pdf/1405.4053v2.pdf.

* For a given article in the Summa Theologiae, I have recorded the article Aquinas's Sentences commentary that was asserted as "related" by the Leonine editors * For the same article in the Summa Theologiae, I have asked for the Vector that represents that article * For this vector, I have asked for a ranked list of all articles in the Sentences Commentary from most similar to least similar. * For the article asserted as similar by the Leonine editors, I have asked for its rank in the similarity least

* On average, article asserted as parallel by the Leonine editors is the 7th highest recommended document in the auto-generated list. * The median rank of the asserted article in the auto-generated list is 1. * 41% (265 of 641 of the articles) were the computer's top recommendation. * 66% (426 of 641 of the articles) were within its top 5 of recommended matches.

## Example 2 ### Ngram Similarity and Convolution

Limitations of the doc2vec similarity

Document Vectors A * B = DotProductVector = Intersection Vector (V) $$ Intersection Vector Summation = \sum\limits_{i=1}^{n}{A_i B_i} $$ If Intersection Vector Summation >= 4, then Doc Vectors A and B are "similar"

"Bag of N-Grams Model"

Paragraph	4gram1	4gram2	4gram3	4gram4	4gram5	4gram6	4gram7	4gram8	4gram9	4gram10	4gram11	4gram12
Doc A	1	1	0	1	0	1	1	1	0	0	1	1
Doc B	1	1	1	0	1	1	1	1	0	1	1	1
Dot Product Vector	1x1=1	1x1=1	0x1=0	1x0=0	0x1=0	1x1=1	0x0=1	1x1=1	0x0=0	0x1=0	1x1=1	1x1=1

“...Only by a **lucky coincidence** [emphasis mine] was I enabled to "unmask" Gracilis' dubious literary honesty. (See Trapp, Damasus, "Augustinian Theology of the 14th Century," Augustiniana 6 (1956): 147-274, p. 254.)

Detecting Successive Text Re-use at Scale with Convolution

||5|6|7|8|9|10|11|12| |---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---| |2|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| |3|0|0|**0**|**0**|**0**|**0**|0|0| |4|0|0|**0**|**1**|**0**|**0**|0|0| |5|0|0|**0**|**0**|**1**|**0**|0|0| |6|0|0|**0**|**0**|**0**|**1**|0|0| |7|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| |8|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0| |9|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|

||||| |---|---|---| |1|0|0|0| |0|1|0|0| |0|0|1|0| |0|0|0|1|

||||| |---|---|---|---| |0|0|0|0| |0|1|0|0| |0|0|1|0| |0|0|0|1|

## Example 3 ### Apparatus Fontium and Citation Similarity

"However, document Z4Yt34-d1e1156-d1e963, written by Melchor Cano, presents a more nuanced view of infidelity, arguing that it can be understood in three ways: as a pure negation of faith, as a contrary position to faith, or as a middle ground between the two. According to Cano, only the second type of infidelity, which involves a deliberate rejection of faith, is considered as a sin."

1) "Close scrutiny of the theory and practice of commentary in Latin medieval Europe and Buddhist India reveals interesting **structural and functional** similarities." (Eltschinger, *From commentary to philosophy*, 271). 2) "In the present writer’s opinion, comparative scholasticism **SHOULD NOT**, at least not primarily, aim at comparing doctrinal tenets and philosophical arguments, but rather at considering the intellectual cultures that were responsible for the formation, the development, and the overall physiognomy of law, the sciences, theology, and philosophy in the two contexts. This includes the institutional environment, the teaching and scholarly practices, the many ways in which knowledge was produced, stored, enriched and made to fructify, etc. In other words, **the ambition is to compare, say, structures...rather than intellectual contents**."" (Eltschinger, *From commentary to philosophy*, 275).

## Conclusion

### The End ### Thank you! ### Comments and/or Questions?