Literary Criticism Ancient & Classical
It's Greek to the Computer
- Publisher
- Les Presses de l'Université d'Ottawa/University of Ottawa Press
- Initial publish date
- Jun 1971
- Category
- Ancient & Classical, General
-
Hardback
- ISBN
- 9780887721144
- Publish Date
- Jun 1971
- List Price
- $28.00
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Description
It's Greek to the Computer should help to settle some very old and central issues that have nagged Classical scholars for a long time. These issues concern the authenticity and the authorship of certain texts that have been attributed to Plato, to Aristotle, to both Plato and Aristotle, and to third parties. The fascinating question: was there a Homer? is also dealt with in a most original and provocative way.
In contrast to the older stylometrics which studied uncommon words, the new stresses the study of the most common words, for these lend themselves to statistical analysis. Professor Morton has presented a thorough introduction to the method of the new stylometrics in this volume.
The kind of investigation represented here can best be carried out by a "team" of computer specialists, statisticians, and Classicists. The team in this case is composed of A.Q. Morton of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, his colleague Professor Sidney Michaelson, Professor A.D. Winspear, the well-known Classicist from the University of Calgary who has recently been working at Oxford, and Dr. Michael Levison, formerly of Birkbeck College in the University of London, now Professor of Computing and Information Science at Queen's University, Kingston.
It's Greek to the Computer is a book that will interest a wide variety of scholars, and all those who relish a good puzzle.