Hasil untuk "History of the Greco-Roman World"

Giacinto Falco

ABSTRACT This article investigates the relationship between language and civic identity in two interconnected contexts: Classical Athens and Hellenistic-Roman Delos. Drawing on literary, epigraphic, and archaeological sources, it shows how linguistic competence served as a marker of civic inclusion or exclusion. In Athens, mastery of Attic was central to ideological constructions of citizenship and often used polemically, especially against demagogues. In Delos, by contrast, daily interaction among Greeks, Romans, and Easterners gave rise to multilingual practices and hybrid identity negotiations. Greek emerged as a vehicle for social permeability, while Latin reinforced legal distinctions. Adopting the theoretical framework of ‘metrolingualism’, the article argues that language, space, and material culture operated together in shaping civic identity. Yet, this fluidity unfolded within a stable juridical-institutional background that remained largely untouched: despite the multiplicity of voices and interactions, the boundary between citizens and non-citizens, between inclusion and exclusion, continued to be defined and preserved at the institutional level.

Zongyue Li, Xiao Han, Yusong Li et al.

Diffusion-based world models have demonstrated strong capabilities in synthesizing realistic long-horizon trajectories for offline reinforcement learning (RL). However, many existing methods do not directly generate actions alongside states and rewards, limiting their compatibility with standard value-based offline RL algorithms that rely on one-step temporal difference (TD) learning. While prior work has explored joint modeling of states, rewards, and actions to address this issue, such formulations often lead to increased training complexity and reduced performance in practice. We propose \textbf{DAWM}, a diffusion-based world model that generates future state-reward trajectories conditioned on the current state, action, and return-to-go, paired with an inverse dynamics model (IDM) for efficient action inference. This modular design produces complete synthetic transitions suitable for one-step TD-based offline RL, enabling effective and computationally efficient training. Empirically, we show that conservative offline RL algorithms such as TD3BC and IQL benefit significantly from training on these augmented trajectories, consistently outperforming prior diffusion-based baselines across multiple tasks in the D4RL benchmark.

Shangzhe Li, Zhiao Huang, Hao Su

Imitation Learning (IL) has achieved remarkable success across various domains, including robotics, autonomous driving, and healthcare, by enabling agents to learn complex behaviors from expert demonstrations. However, existing IL methods often face instability challenges, particularly when relying on adversarial reward or value formulations in world model frameworks. In this work, we propose a novel approach to online imitation learning that addresses these limitations through a reward model based on random network distillation (RND) for density estimation. Our reward model is built on the joint estimation of expert and behavioral distributions within the latent space of the world model. We evaluate our method across diverse benchmarks, including DMControl, Meta-World, and ManiSkill2, showcasing its ability to deliver stable performance and achieve expert-level results in both locomotion and manipulation tasks. Our approach demonstrates improved stability over adversarial methods while maintaining expert-level performance.

Christopher M. Graney

This paper provides an overview of recent historical research regarding scientifically-informed challenges to the idea that the stars are other suns orbited by other inhabited earths -- an idea that came to be known as "the Plurality of Worlds". Johannes Kepler in the seventeenth century, Jacques Cassini in the eighteenth, and William Whewell in the nineteenth each argued against "pluralism" based on what in their respective times was solid science. Nevertheless, pluralism remained popular despite these and other scientific challenges. This history will be of interest to the astronomical community so that it is better positioned to avoid difficulties should the historical trajectory of pluralism continue, especially as it persists in the popular imagination.

Zhi Wang, Li Zhang, Wenhao Wu et al.

A longstanding goal of artificial general intelligence is highly capable generalists that can learn from diverse experiences and generalize to unseen tasks. The language and vision communities have seen remarkable progress toward this trend by scaling up transformer-based models trained on massive datasets, while reinforcement learning (RL) agents still suffer from poor generalization capacity under such paradigms. To tackle this challenge, we propose Meta Decision Transformer (Meta-DT), which leverages the sequential modeling ability of the transformer architecture and robust task representation learning via world model disentanglement to achieve efficient generalization in offline meta-RL. We pretrain a context-aware world model to learn a compact task representation, and inject it as a contextual condition to the causal transformer to guide task-oriented sequence generation. Then, we subtly utilize history trajectories generated by the meta-policy as a self-guided prompt to exploit the architectural inductive bias. We select the trajectory segment that yields the largest prediction error on the pretrained world model to construct the prompt, aiming to encode task-specific information complementary to the world model maximally. Notably, the proposed framework eliminates the requirement of any expert demonstration or domain knowledge at test time. Experimental results on MuJoCo and Meta-World benchmarks across various dataset types show that Meta-DT exhibits superior few and zero-shot generalization capacity compared to strong baselines while being more practical with fewer prerequisites. Our code is available at https://github.com/NJU-RL/Meta-DT.

Helen Au-Yang, Jacques H. H. Perk

We present our personal histories with Michael Fisher. We describe how each one of us first came to Cornell University. We also discuss our many subsequent interactions and successful collaborations with him on various physics projects.

Daria de Tinguy, Sven Remmery, Pietro Mazzaglia et al.

Learning to navigate unknown environments from scratch is a challenging problem. This work presents a system that integrates world models with curiosity-driven exploration for autonomous navigation in new environments. We evaluate performance through simulations and real-world experiments of varying scales and complexities. In simulated environments, the approach rapidly and comprehensively explores the surroundings. Real-world scenarios introduce additional challenges. Despite demonstrating promise in a small controlled environment, we acknowledge that larger and dynamic environments can pose challenges for the current system. Our analysis emphasizes the significance of developing adaptable and robust world models that can handle environmental changes to prevent repetitive exploration of the same areas.

Yaroslav Aleshkevych

The article provides a historiographical overview and analysis of specific English-language publications by contemporary Slovenian researcher Marjeta Šašel Kos on the Illyrian issue. Issues related to hypotheses about the origin of the Illyrians, significant events in their internal history, achievements in various fields of culture, and an objective assessment of their relationship with the Greco-Roman world form the basis for an in-depth study of the ancient population of the Western Balkans, Central and Southwestern Europe. The world of Illyrian tribes, who were inhabitants of the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, the northwestern part of the Balkan Peninsula, and the southeastern part of the Alpine region, was in close proximity to the borders of the spread of the Greco-Roman civilization and its culture. Numerous Illyrian tribes, formed in the northern and southern ethno-cultural zone of the Eastern Hallstatt, were among the oldest tribal formations in the barbarian world of Europe (Pax Barbaricum). The world of the Illyrian tribes was sought to be understood by the ancient Greeks, followed by the Romans. However, contacts between representatives of these two diametrically opposite worlds ended in confrontation and assimilation. After numerous and bloody clashes, the world of the Illyrians lost its identity, underwent powerful Hellenization and Romanization, and acquired signs of deep provinciality. Therefore, the article's author seeks to introduce the reader to the achievements of individual bright and talented representatives of contemporary Illyriology and popularize their scientific work. Marjeta Šašel Kos's scientific work is diverse and productive (several extensive and substantive monographs and more than 70 scientific articles). The Slovenian researcher bases her views on archaeological and epigraphic materials, information comparisons, and reasoned criticism of ancient historians and geographers. All of these trends pursue a particular goal: to overcome the stereotype of perceiving representatives of the tribal world of ancient Europe, which was shaped by Greco-Roman written tradition. The review of her English-language works on the Illyrian issue demonstrates that Slovenian and European Illyriology are actively developing, allowing us to get to know and understand the specifics of the historical development of the ancient Illyrians.

Noria Petrache

This paper investigates, from a psycho-sociological perspective, notions of self-reflection and the human condition in the Greco-Roman world during the ancient period, focusing on the social constructionism of personal characterisation. In this context, Marcus Aurelius, one of Rome's most remarkable philosopher-emperors, was considered an exemplary, wise, and moral leader during a tumultuous period marked by wars, epidemics, and betrayals. The positive image of Marcus Aurelius has endured in history due to the efforts of recording and transmission of this depiction in ancient sources, which emphasised the enrichment of imperial power with attention to the philosophical form. Both within the Stoic doctrine and from the perspective of symbolic interactionism, the human condition is perceived as a result of social construction and subjective interpretations, in which the individual has the power to shape their own experience and create their reality. Qualitative research methods associated with symbolic interactionism emphasise individual experience and understanding of the world, being helpful in explaining broad social changes and the agency of participants. This perspective provides a broad framework for analysing interactions that shape social architecture through which the image of Marcus Aurelius is propagated.

Michael Bar-Asher Siega, Ben-Dov

Gürkan Çil

This study deals with Michel Foucault's perspective on language, knowledge, power, reason and the institution of "Religion" in the context of his approaches to language, knowledge, power, reason and all these approaches from a sociological point of view in a hermenuetic (hermeneutic) way. Foucault's effort to reveal the organic link between them in the context of the "subject-power" relationship shows that we need to read him with a unique perspective. Foucault, who has not made a systematic explanation of religious practices, draws attention to the fact that the institution of "religion", especially the understanding of Christianity in the western society he is in, is an important force that shapes history. Foucault, who has made in-depth studies on sexuality, states that the concepts related to the Greco-Roman world of sexuality have been negatively altered by Christianity. Along with these, the concept of "body" appears as the phenomenon that will interest us the most. It is necessary to express how important the domination of Foucault's conception of power over the subject and its externalized expression, the body, is. As a social being, human beings have to express themselves on the stage of society with their bodies, which leads us to the concept of "power", which Foucault touches upon extensively. Thus, the concepts of subject, knowledge/power and power will help us to explain the phenomenon of internal and external intervention that the body encounters. In summary, as an attempt to discuss and explain phenomenological approaches ontologically and epistemologically, the study titled "Michel Foucault: His Views on Religion in the Context of Subject, Knowledge/Power and Power" aims to provide a conceptual framework for studies in this field.

I. Dokuchaev

The article considers the Middle Ages as a category of historical typology of culture. It is shown that this category has a negative content, but it is used to designate a key period in the history of European culture. However, its typological features are poorly defined; the feudal nature of production relations cannot be such a sign, since this closes the prospect of using the category of the Middle Ages to describe non-European cultures. The article proposes a substantiation of the key properties of the culture of the medieval type. Its most important features are synthetic, rationalization of tradition and world religion. The Middle Ages as a synthetic type of traditional culture presupposes rationalization and unification within the framework of a whole cultural sources of different origin and content. Thus, the European Middle Ages includes the following main elements: Greco-Roman antiquity, European agricultural culture, religious culture of Judeo-Christian origin and aristocratic culture of European peoples. The Islamic Middle Ages includes the traditional agricultural aristocratic and folk cultures of Iran, the Arabian Peninsula and the Turkic ethnic groups, Islamic culture and ancient European heritage. Buddhist Middle Ages – aristocratic and folk cultures of Japan, China, India, Tibet and Southeast Asia, Buddhist culture. The rationalization of tradition ensures the unity of these sources of medieval culture, turning eclecticism into a strict and consistent system. The main subjects of the cultural genesis of the Middle Ages are the Christian Church, the Muslim Ummah and the Buddhist Sangha, the principle of cultural genesis is a rationalized tradition that synthesizes the original cultural material, the main type of cultural artifacts that ensures the effectiveness of cultural genesis and the unity of its subject on the basis of a key existential value and faith is the world religion, which is either universal monotheism, or the practice of transition to an absolute sacred reality.

Vlad Sobal, Alfredo Canziani, Nicolas Carion et al.

Training self-driving systems to be robust to the long-tail of driving scenarios is a critical problem. Model-based approaches leverage simulation to emulate a wide range of scenarios without putting users at risk in the real world. One promising path to faithful simulation is to train a forward model of the world to predict the future states of both the environment and the ego-vehicle given past states and a sequence of actions. In this paper, we argue that it is beneficial to model the state of the ego-vehicle, which often has simple, predictable and deterministic behavior, separately from the rest of the environment, which is much more complex and highly multimodal. We propose to model the ego-vehicle using a simple and differentiable kinematic model, while training a stochastic convolutional forward model on raster representations of the state to predict the behavior of the rest of the environment. We explore several configurations of such decoupled models, and evaluate their performance both with Model Predictive Control (MPC) and direct policy learning. We test our methods on the task of highway driving and demonstrate lower crash rates and better stability. The code is available at https://github.com/vladisai/pytorch-PPUU/tree/ICLR2022.

Himanshu Mavani, Navinder Singh

The way the topic of black-body radiation is presented in standard textbooks (i.e. from Rayleigh-Jeans to Max Planck) does not follow the actual historical timeline of the understanding of the black-body radiation problem. Authors believe that a presentation which follows an actual timeline of the ideas (although not a logical presentation of the field) would be of interest not only from the history of science perspective but also from a pedagogical perspective. Therefore, we attempt a concise history of this very interesting field of science.

Mihai Dragnea

An exploration of the complex relationship between Christian constructions of identity and the idea of sacrality derived from the ancient Greco-Roman world, this article argues that Christian identity developed uniquely in a specific context, often intertwined with theology and mythology. The complex relationship between the two was crucial in the construction of Christian identity in the lands recently converted, and influenced the authors of world maps from the eleventh century onward. This study investigates how the pagan past and Christian present were incorporated in some world maps, such as the twelfth-century English Sawley map. Thus it offers readers a coherent analysis of early history-writing in northern Europe in the first centuries after conversion.

Branelli, Eneo

In 1971 Louis Holtz gave the editio princeps of a grammatical chapter about interjections, from the ms. Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Lat. 7530 (=P), sec. VIIIex. (ff. 220v, 31 Sed illae in quibus exprimitur – 221, r, 18 aut uerentis ut pro pudor et reliqua). The paper brings a new witness, the ms. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek, Diez. B Sant. 66 (=B), sec. VIIIex. (pp. 124, 19 +ConLECTIONES VOCUM – 125, 17 ut pro pudor et reliqua), provides a new critical text of the chapter with an Italian translation, analyses connections with the Anonymus ad Cuimnanum in <XXV> De interiectione and examines sources and parallels for the chapter.

Lloyd H. Steffen

At the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of Canada, scholars from a variety of Antiquity-related fields – biblical and classical studies, history of religions, and religious studies – planned a follow-up workshop on violence and religion in Antiquity. Three years later, under the sponsorship of the Université de Montréal and the University of Ottawa, the workshop brought together scholars with expertise in Greco-Roman religion and early Christianity, and on the docket was the topic of religious violence. Three years after that, this publication appeared. This impressive volume is comprised of 17 excellent essays that for all of their diversity in the particularities of topic and subject matter make a strong case for a DIJKSTRA, JITSE H.F. & RASCHLE, CHRISTIAN R. (eds.) (2020). Religious Violence in the Ancient World. From Classical Athens to Late Antiquity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, xiv 432 pp., 110,12 € [ISBN: 978-1-10849490-8]. Recensiones

Murray Gell-Mann, James Hartle

We continue our efforts to understand, within the framework of the quantum mechanics of the universe as a whole, the quasiclassical realm of familiar experience as a feature emergent from the Hamiltonian of the elementary particles and the initial condition of the universe. Quantum mechanics assigns probabilities to exhaustive sets of alternative decoherent histories of the universe. We introduce and define the notion of strong decoherence. We replace the notion of maximal sets of alternative decohering histories by defining the more useful concept of "full" sets of alternative strongly decohering histories. These full sets fall into equivalence classes each of which is characterized by a basis in Hilbert space. Finally we describe our continuing efforts to find measures of classicality --- measures that could be applied to such full sets of alternative strongly decohering so as to characterize a quasiclassical realm.

Emília Maria Rocha de Oliveira

M. Hefni

Success of the Ottoman empire as one of the greatest, most extensive, and longest-lasting empires in the history of the world could not be released from the efforts of the government to organize the state throught establishment various institutions. Among them are judicials instititution such as kadi courts and H isbah institutions which was led by a muhtesib . Therefore, this paper discusses the relationship and the interaction between the kadi and the muhtesib in the Ottoman empire, and their historical roots in the periods before. The position of a kadi and a muhesib has existed in periods before the Ottoman empire. A kadi has existed since the Prophet Muhammad pbuh period. While, a muhtesib historically has began in the Greco-Roman agoranomos. In the Ottoman empire, both became important governmental functions. They had the power to pronounce decisions on everything connected with the shari'a and the Sultanic law. They played roles in controlling urban life, its economic activities in particular. All the production and manufacturing activities in the cities that were carried out within the framework of the guild organization was under the control of the kadi and the muhtesib . For example a craft guilds and a creditor guilds.