The practice or art of divining the future by examining the entrails of sacrificed animals, especially in ancient Rome.
From Latin 'extispicium' (extispex + -icium suffix), meaning the practice or art of examining entrails. It evolved from ancient Etruscan and Greek divination practices that the Romans adopted and formalized.
Extispicy was the original big data—Romans carefully recorded patterns in livers, hearts, and intestines to find correlations with events, believing consistent patterns revealed divine will; modern scientists would recognize this as an early attempt at systematic observation, even though the causal interpretation was mystical.
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