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A forum for people with knowledge of the Bible in its original languages to discuss its manuscripts and textual history from the perspective of historic evangelical theology.
- Contributors
- Peter M. Head (ed)
- Tommy Wasserman (ed)
- P. J. Williams, and others
Cisne, J. 2005. How science survived: Medieval manuscripts' "demography" and
ReplyDeleteclassic texts' extinction. Science 307(Feb. 25):1305-1307. Available at
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/307/5713/1305
Well, call me an old sceptic, but I don't think this is going to help anybody.
The modelling is both too complicated and too simplistic. It is too complicated in the general sense that it involves mathematics (something I repented of long ago). It is too simplistic in the sense that it transposes population growth assumptions onto the manuscripts (e.g. each manuscript is equal in its ability to reproduce - something that I doubt is true).
I suppose it is worth thinking about what variables to input into the modelling. The response article has some useful reflections:
Gilman, S.L., and F.E. Glaze. 2005. Enhanced: "How science
survived"-medieval manuscripts as fossils. Science 307(Feb. 25):1208-1209.
Available at http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/307/5713/1208
Thanks to Wieland Willker for posting the titles to the textualcriticism email group.