[1] From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com> (73)
Subject: Re: 13.0241 humanities computing projects
[2] From: Fotis Jannidis <Fotis.Jannidis@lrz.uni- (35)
muenchen.de>
Subject: re: what is a humanities computing project?
[3] From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca> (52)
Subject: What is "what is"?
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:08:15 +0100
From: "Norman D. Hinton" <hinton@springnet1.com>
Subject: Re: 13.0241 humanities computing projects
> > If I read Willard right, then projects such as my database of medieval
> > Spanish manuscripts, PhiloBiblon, do not qualify as humanities computing,
> > since the intent is not to study "the consequences and implications of
> > computational methods" but rather to provide a resource for my colleagues
> > in the field of medieval Spanish literature.
> >
> > If this is so, then the proposition is manifestly absurd.
>
> I do not think so. The issue at stake is rather: does there
> exist a discipline which we may call "humanities computing",
> distinct from "philology computing" -- that would be your
> case -- "history computing", "archaeology computing", etc.
> etc. etc.?
Excuse me -- Philology is not one of the Humanities ? In that case,
nothing is.
(And History is, too, despite misguided administrators who want to lump it with
Psychology and Sociology.)
____________________________________
I'll take a crack at it:
> Let's try another approach. Let's say we have a range of projects with the
> following characteristics. Irrespective of how good the projects are in the
> field of application, where would you draw the line between those that are
> humanities computing projects and those that are not?
>
> 1. Published papers on the project written using a word-processor;
> otherwise no involvement with the computer.
No. That's just The World's Fastest Typewriter.
>
> 2. Wordprocessing, plus a Web site describing the project, perhaps offering
> online papers in which its results in the field of application are
discussed.
Maybe, though it seems marginal as far as computing goes. But inventories of
materials have been part of Humanities scholarship for centuries, so why not ?
>
> 3. The above, plus access (online and/or CD-ROM) to the data of the project
> through some straightforward query mechanism, e.g. concordancer, list of
> contents.
Yeah, though marginal still. Here and above we may still be in the "monkeys
with
typewriters" stage.
>
> 4. The above, plus a significant role for the application of standard
> computational tools, such as a concordancer or image-manipulation program,
> to problems in the field of application.
Yes, why not ?
>
> 5. The above, plus significant scholarly contribution in metadata and/or
> through specialised analytic algorithms, e.g. which allow lemmatised
> searching, automatic generation of probable synonyms from an ancillary
> lexical database, location of similar shapes in image data.
Of course.
>
> 6. Some or all of the above, plus explicit, published analysis and
> discussion of the consequences and implications of the computational
> methods employed for scholarly problems in the field of application and in
> other fields in the humanities.
Indeed.
>
> 7. The above, plus cogent discussion of how the project and others like it
> affect the epistemology and sociology of knowledge.
Well, the last part doesn't have much to do with computing, I think.
Where are databases ? Information storage, analysis, manipulation, and
retrieval
are some of the most cogent things scholars have been doing for many centuries.
These techniques form the heart of many famous and applauded scholarly
investigations. Most of them can e done better on computers, and no, the
standard
commercial packages are not very good for doing this without modification.
In the
Old Days it was necessary to write one's own database program: now one needs a
"runtime module" quite often. Developing this may take all the humanistic
scholarly techniques one has assembled over many years. (Otherwise you
just have
Eeyore and the pot and the busted balloon.)
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:08:44 +0100
From: Fotis Jannidis <Fotis.Jannidis@lrz.uni-muenchen.de>
Subject: re: what is a humanities computing project?
From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk>
> Let's try another approach. Let's say we have a range of projects with the
> following characteristics. Irrespective of how good the projects are in the
> field of application, where would you draw the line between those that are
> humanities computing projects and those that are not?
> 1. Published papers on the project written using a word-processor;
> otherwise no involvement with the computer.
> 2. Wordprocessing, plus a Web site describing the project, perhaps offering
> online papers in which its results in the field of application are
discussed.
> 3. The above, plus access (online and/or CD-ROM) to the data of the project
> through some straightforward query mechanism, e.g. concordancer, list of
> contents.
> [...]
I would propose to draw the line between 1 and 2. Criterion for the
distinction could be
the question whether the use of the computer gives the recipient access to
information
he or she couldn't have realistically otherwise. The typical use of
computers in our field
(mixing media, hypertext, information retrieval / statistical analysis,
instant
communication world wide) cannot not be achieved without a computer - if
you consider
the time factor (that's the "realistically").
If the entry to the field of humanities computing is so easy and the field
is so wide, it
could be also of interest to differentiate activities in the field, maybe
along the axis how
much of your activity is concerned with the computer problems, something which
changed a lot and is going to change even more.
Fotis Jannidis
________________________________________
Forum Computerphilologie
Dr. Fotis Jannidis
http://computerphilologie.uni-muenchen.de
--[3]------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 22 Oct 1999 08:11:42 +0100
From: Francois Lachance <lachance@chass.utoronto.ca>
Subject: What is "what is"?
Willard,
o the great difference between a keyword and a literal string search.
Guess what database I was searching when this message was returned:
Error: All your search words were considered too commonplace. (e.g. a,
and, or the) Please try again using less common words.
Yes, I would have to read through many an posting to Humanist to award
the frequency prize for the uncommon tenacity of the query "what is
Humanities Computing".
o if it were simply a matter of differentiating "to Calculate" from "to
compute", the pebble praxis from the stoneless theory...
okay. let me propose something less spectral than a series of permissible
visibilities... are you not after the difference between performer and
composer.
.... and is this not a better way to sell the discipline to funders and
decisions makers?
and may I add that the performers are the poor cousins to the composers
for the moment and for the moment alone.
E.g. Recently two non-academic members of the computing in the humanities
community were dining and the conversation turned to a tale from Zen Flesh
Zen Bones. One of the interlocuters related a summary of the story:
master expressess wish; student commits an action
snippet of dialogue is reported
"what have you done?"
"what have you said?"
without a computer in sight or at hand, one of the other interlocutors
comments on the tense (both the saying and the doing are in the past
tense) and immediately begins a narrative parsing that positions a
narrative action (the deed) at t1 and an other narrative action (the
saying(s) at t2 (a saying before the being done) and t3 (a saying after
the being done) and explains that t1 is intercalcated between t2
and t3 in the diagesis ..... is this not counting, not reckoning,
sequencing and playing with matrices and intently translating the
calculation textual markers into a compution of possible logical
connectives? Now to transpose the example to the field/discipline of
humanities computing: is not the function of your expanded series
still based upon the visible/invisible and does not that single sensory
mode imply the lone practicioner whereas if we took a transactional
approach could we not contemplate certain activities within the field
being akin to a second party sounding/listening the markings of another?
This, I believe, is close to Geoffrey Rockwell's very Peircean formulation
of Humanities Computing being in the last instance a community [of users]?
If this indeed be the case is the call of "what is" also a phatic marker
testing the channels of communication? I.e. what if "what is" were a
lovely refrain too too commonplace to be a concept... One senses the need
for a conference on Humanities Computing: The Discipline and the Noise.
One wonders if the expression is commutative [it is for Judith Schlanger
in L'invention intellectuelle where there is much to be said for the
noise of discipline].
-- Francois Lachance Post-doctoral Fellow projet HYPERLISTES project http://www.humanities.mcmaster.ca/~hyplist/
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