{"abstention_reason":null,"arm":"SUBSTRATE_DIVERSE_P2","candidate_id":"discrete_continuous_model_selection__literature_literary_theory__SUBSTRATE_DIVERSE_P2","cell_id":"discrete_continuous_model_selection__literature_literary_theory","decision":"PROPOSAL","experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp13_second_slot_policy60_20260806","proposal":{"actors":["Genetic critics reconstructing the composition history of a literary manuscript","A manuscript conservator responsible for object safety","An instrumentation specialist collecting optical and elemental measurements","The archive custodian authorizing access and use"],"affected_objective":"Defensible reconstruction of materially distinct inscription and revision strata in literary manuscripts without mistaking gradual aging, staining, or within-stroke variation for separate writing events.","arm":"SUBSTRATE_DIVERSE_P2","authority_safety":{"authorized_first_step":"The archive custodian, advised by the conservator, may authorize instrument calibration on expendable ink targets followed by non-contact optical measurements of six preselected manuscript regions; elemental measurements require separate safety approval and conservative exposure limits.","decision_authority":"The archive custodian controls object access, the conservator may veto or halt any measurement, the instrumentation specialist determines whether readings meet calibration standards, and literary scholars retain responsibility for provisional compositional interpretations.","excluded_actions":["Do not sample, scrape, swab, erase, humidify, flatten, or otherwise alter the manuscript.","Do not infer authorship, date, or revision sequence from material contrast alone.","Do not expose an object to X-rays, intense illumination, heat, or prolonged handling without conservator-approved limits.","Do not train an automated classifier or treat instrument-defined regions as canonical textual strata.","Do not generalize beyond the measured regions or publish object-specific findings without archive approval."],"halt_rollback":"Stop immediately if calibration drifts, registration error approaches the width of the relevant stroke, illumination or exposure exceeds approved limits, the object shows any physical response, or purported boundaries disappear under repeated measurement. Remove the object from the instrument, preserve only custodian-approved raw readings, and revert to existing photographs and descriptive notes."},"baseline":"Revision strata are commonly proposed from visible ink color, handwriting, overwriting, and textual sense. Under ordinary illumination, a leaf may appear divided into discrete ink campaigns even when color changes continuously through fading or staining; conversely, materially distinct additions may look identical. The baseline therefore lacks measurements capable of testing whether a proposed step boundary is a physical discontinuity or part of a continuous surface gradient.","candidate_id":"discrete_continuous_model_selection__literature_literary_theory__SUBSTRATE_DIVERSE_P2","causal_chain":["Genetic interpretation sometimes depends on whether adjacent cancellations, insertions, and overwriting belong to one inscription episode or materially distinct revision strata.","Visible color compresses several physical variables—ink composition, deposit thickness, substrate reflectance, fading, staining, and illumination—into an ambiguous appearance.","Treating every visible contrast as discrete can manufacture revision events from continuous material gradients, while smoothing the whole leaf can erase abrupt compositional changes at stroke intersections or insertion boundaries.","Calibrated reflectance measurements sample continuous optical response across and along strokes; conservator-approved elemental readings provide an independent material contrast at selected candidate boundaries.","A hybrid representation retains continuous variation inside a materially coherent region and marks a discrete boundary only when a localized discontinuity repeats and is not explained by substrate or registration change.","Resolution checks determine whether the instrument can resolve the proposed boundary, and repeated transects test whether it is stable rather than noise or an isolated defect.","The resulting material map constrains which revision-stratum accounts remain physically possible while leaving authorship, chronology, and literary significance to textual interpretation."],"cell_id":"discrete_continuous_model_selection__literature_literary_theory","consequence":"False discreteness can multiply supposed drafts or revision campaigns from fading and stains; false smoothness can merge materially distinct additions. Either error can distort accounts of composition, suppress alternatives, and attach literary significance to a boundary the physical manuscript does not support.","diversity_from_prior_proposals":"The sealed P1 concerns narrative-source attribution and continuous epistemic modulation within printed discourse. This proposal instead addresses the material stratigraphy of manuscript inscription through optical and elemental instrumentation. Its problem is reconstruction of physical revision strata, its intervention is calibrated measurement of ink and support, and its causal path runs from photon–matter or X-ray–matter interaction to detected material discontinuities and then to constraints on genetic interpretation; none repairs or extends P1's annotation protocol.","experiment_id":"eoa_inverse_innovation_exp13_second_slot_policy60_20260806","intervention":"Pilot a non-destructive hybrid material-field map for selected manuscript revisions. After calibration on expendable ink-and-paper targets, collect registered reflectance measurements along repeated transects across cancellations, insertions, overwriting intersections, and visually uniform controls. Treat reflectance as a continuous field within strokes and across the support. At a small number of conservator-approved candidate boundaries, add replicated portable micro-XRF readings to test for an abrupt elemental-composition change. Declare a provisional discrete material boundary only when a localized change exceeds repeat-measurement variation, recurs across adjacent transects, remains after substrate-background correction, and is spatially sharper than the surrounding fading or stain gradient. Otherwise retain the variation as continuous or unresolved. The physical measurements constrain material regimes but do not themselves assign writer, date, sequence, or interpretation.","mechanism_mapping":[{"counterfactual_removal":"Without the hybrid representation, the study must either split every visible or measured contrast into separate strata or smooth potentially abrupt material changes into a single field.","mechanism_slug":"hybrid_discrete_continuous_model","role":"Represents gradual reflectance and aging variation continuously while admitting replicated, localized material-composition discontinuities as provisional discrete boundaries."},{"counterfactual_removal":"Without resolution selection, a scan step or detector footprint wider than an ink stroke could average two materials and erase the very discontinuity under examination.","mechanism_slug":"sampling_interval_choice","role":"Sets transect spacing, detector footprint, and repeat cadence from calibration targets and the thinnest relevant stroke or intersection."},{"counterfactual_removal":"Without transition auditing, instrumental noise, paper texture, misregistration, stains, or fading could be misclassified as an inscription event.","mechanism_slug":"transition_resolution_audit","role":"Tests candidate boundaries through repeated transects, background controls, cross-instrument comparison, and explicit spatial-resolution checks."}],"nearest_rivals":["Conventional visual and paleographic segmentation under ordinary illumination","A pure discrete map assigning every color or spectral cluster to a separate ink campaign","A single continuous discoloration surface that permits no abrupt material boundaries"],"negative_tests":{"intervention_falsifier":"The intervention is falsified for the pilot if repeated calibrated measurements do not distinguish preselected candidate boundaries from within-stroke variation and paper-background gradients, or if its provisional boundaries are less stable across repeats than visual judgments while adding no constraint on competing revision accounts.","problem_falsifier":"The problem is falsified for the sampled regions if all materially plausible revision accounts remain unchanged when visible contrasts are modeled once as discrete strata and once as continuous gradients, or if no interpretive claim depends on the existence of a physical inscription boundary.","risks":["Illumination or X-ray exposure may damage a fragile object if limits are poorly chosen.","Detector footprint and registration error may blur narrow crossings and create false smoothness.","Paper texture, stains, ink thickness, and differential aging may mimic compositional discontinuities.","Different ink formulations may share the measured signatures, while one ink batch may vary within a stroke.","Material difference does not establish writer identity, chronology, intention, or literary significance.","Instrument availability may bias scholarship toward measurable manuscripts and well-resourced archives."],"strongest_counterevidence":"If visually proposed strata repeatedly show only smooth, background-correlated physical variation, while known separate inscriptions on calibration or provenance grounds cannot be distinguished by the approved instruments, the measurements lack the selectivity needed to arbitrate discrete-versus-continuous material structure."},"next_evidence_step":"Calibrate the instruments on an expendable target containing same-ink thickness gradients, different-ink boundaries, overlapping strokes, stains, and aged-paper variation. If calibration meets conservator-set exposure and resolution criteria, measure six authorized regions from one manuscript leaf: two proposed revision boundaries, two apparent continuous fades or stains, and two visually uniform controls. Acquire three registered transects per region and blinded repeats. Compare a pure discrete account, a continuous-gradient account, and the hybrid rule on repeatability, boundary width, background correlation, missed known target boundaries, invented target boundaries, and whether the result eliminates any predeclared compositional account. End after these regions.","observable_state":"For each instrument footprint: spatial coordinates and registration uncertainty; illumination or exposure dose; support reflectance adjacent to the stroke; wavelength-specific stroke reflectance; approved elemental intensities where collected; stroke width and intersection geometry; repeat-measurement variance; local gradient magnitude and boundary width; correspondence with stains, folds, abrasion, or paper texture; whether adjacent transects reproduce the change; and which predeclared revision-stratum accounts require that boundary.","prior_art_status":"UNSEARCHED","problem":"In genetic criticism, scholars may infer separate acts of composition or revision from visible changes in manuscript ink. Yet the physical signal can vary continuously because of deposit thickness, fading, paper texture, moisture history, staining, or illumination, while genuinely different inks can appear alike. Modeling every contrast as a discrete inscription event invents revision strata; modeling the leaf as a smooth color field erases abrupt material changes. Because those boundaries constrain accounts of cancellation, insertion, and rewriting, the wrong granularity can alter literary claims about how a work developed.","proposal_index":2,"remaining_contrastive_claim":"For selected manuscript regions, a hybrid map combining continuous calibrated reflectance fields with conservatively validated discrete material discontinuities should reject some physical revision-stratum accounts that both ordinary visual segmentation and a globally smooth discoloration model leave unresolved; it cannot independently establish authorship, chronology, or intention.","revision_record":{"claim_changes":["Initial version limits the claim to material discontinuities and constraints on compositional accounts, not identification of writers, dates, or intentions."],"conceptual_changes":["Initial formulation maps continuous dynamics to reflectance, fading, staining, and deposit gradients, and discrete events to replicated localized changes in inscription material."],"evidence_changes":["Initial bounded test includes an expendable calibration target, six authorized manuscript regions, repeated transects, controls, and three rival representations."],"operational_changes":["Initial safeguards give the conservator stop authority, require separate approval for elemental measurements, prohibit physical sampling, and cap the pilot at one leaf."],"parent_version":null,"progress_targets_addressed":["Materially independent problem, intervention, and causal path from sealed P1","Measurement-instrumentation primary substrate","Explicit costs of false discreteness and false smoothness","Resolution, boundary, continuity, and hybrid rules","Physical controls and repeat-measurement falsifiers","Object-safety authority and rollback","Bounded first evidence step"]},"schema_version":1,"structural_mapping":[{"archetype_element":"Decision Need","domain_realization":"Determine whether a proposed manuscript revision boundary is compatible with a distinct material inscription regime or is better treated as continuous surface variation."},{"archetype_element":"Process Change Signature","domain_realization":"Ink and support signals vary gradually through thickness, fading, stains, and texture but may change abruptly where a different inscription material begins or crosses an earlier stroke."},{"archetype_element":"Cost of False Smoothness","domain_realization":"Averaging across a narrow, real material discontinuity can merge a later insertion or cancellation with the underlying inscription."},{"archetype_element":"Cost of False Discreteness","domain_realization":"Converting every color or spectral fluctuation into a separate stratum can manufacture writing episodes from aging, substrate variation, or instrumental noise."},{"archetype_element":"Granularity Choice","domain_realization":"Use continuous spatial measurements by default and recognize discrete material regimes only at replicated, localized discontinuities that exceed calibrated variation."},{"archetype_element":"Step Boundary","domain_realization":"A provisional boundary must recur across adjacent transects, exceed repeat-measurement variation, survive support-background correction, and be sharper than the surrounding gradient."},{"archetype_element":"Continuity Assumption","domain_realization":"Variation is treated as continuous within a stroke region only where repeated measurements show no localized discontinuity beyond calibration error and no conflicting elemental change."},{"archetype_element":"Measurement Resolution","domain_realization":"Detector footprint and transect spacing must resolve the thinnest relevant stroke or intersection, with registration uncertainty recorded for every measurement."},{"archetype_element":"Transition Validation","domain_realization":"Candidate transitions are retested through blinded repeats, neighboring transects, visually uniform controls, background measurements, and approved cross-instrument checks."},{"archetype_element":"Hybrid Boundary Rule","domain_realization":"A validated localized discontinuity ends one continuous material field and begins another; failed or ambiguous candidates remain continuous or unresolved rather than becoming forced strata."},{"archetype_element":"Approximation Error Check","domain_realization":"Compare discrete, continuous, and hybrid maps for known-boundary detection on calibration targets, repeatability on the manuscript, and effects on predeclared compositional accounts."}],"substrate_contract":{"counterfactual_independence":"Removing databases, automated clustering, image-classification models, workflow software, and digital interpretive routing leaves the essential intervention intact: calibrated photon–matter and X-ray–matter interactions produce directly inspectable physical measurements that can be repeated and manually compared. Computation may register, display, or archive readings but does not create the material contrast.","forbidden_channel_audit":"The intervention does not depend on governance changes, incentives, training, NLP, predictive models, databases, algorithmic segmentation, or digital control for its essential effect. Custodial approval and manual interpretation are safety and support wrappers. The new causal evidence arises from physical interaction between the manuscript, controlled illumination or excitation, and instrument detectors.","primary_allowed_process":"MEASUREMENT_INSTRUMENTATION"},"title":"Hybrid Material-Field Mapping of Manuscript Revision Strata","version":0},"schema_version":1}