[1] From: Willard McCarty <Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk> (23)
Subject: scholarship
[2] From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca> (14)
Subject: ideas about data selection
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Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 10:09:05 +0100 (BST)
From: Willard McCarty <Willard.McCarty@kcl.ac.uk>
Subject: scholarship
This is not strictly speaking about humanities computing, but if it does not
apply, then I quit.
In his review of Pierre Verger's <title>Ewe: The use of plants in Yoruba
society</title> and <title>The go-between</cite> (TLS 4974 31 July, pp.
5-6), John Ryle notes,
"It was this Candomble community of Salvador, still the blackest city in
Brazil, that Verger, an exile from bourgeois existence is pre-Second World
War France, took as his own. Although he rejected the label 'intellectual',
habitually referring to scholars as 'impostors' and 'colourless parrots', he
became Candomble's leading chronicler. His historical work on the slave
trade and his documentation in writing and photographs, of religious
practice in West Africa and north-eastern Brazil, locate him in the world of
learning. But for Verger these activities were all ways of drawing closer to
black Brazilians, the objects of his admiration and affection."
Sad, isn't it, that drawing closer to the objects of one's admiration and
affection should not characterise all scholarship?
WM
----------
Dr. Willard McCarty
Senior Lecturer, Centre for Computing in the Humanities
King's College London / Strand / London WC2R 2LS
+44 (0)171 873 2784 voice; 873 5081 fax
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/wlm/
maui gratia
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Date: Tue, 4 Aug 1998 08:27:13 -0400 (EDT)
From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: ideas about data selection
Willard,
Came across this passage by B.H. Partee, the linguist and philosopher
of language, where she states that she is
inclined to believe that good ideas about data selection are
just as important and difficult to achieve as good ideas about
theory-building and problem solving.*
A remark akin to those often made by computing humanists.
(*_Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts and Sciences. Proceedings of
Nobel Symposium 65_ ed. by Sutre Allen. New York Walter de Gruyter,
1989. p. 157)
--
Francois
wonders how machimes make promises
in scifi --
<http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~lachance/sd/sd0003.htm>
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