{"id":913,"date":"2013-06-16T14:30:26","date_gmt":"2013-06-16T14:30:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jcmeister.de\/?p=913"},"modified":"2023-05-23T20:29:12","modified_gmt":"2023-05-23T20:29:12","slug":"on-the-computationalists-vs-humanists-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/on-the-computationalists-vs-humanists-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"On the “computationalists” vs. “humanists” debate"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following is my five cents on an issue recently raised (again) on HUMANIST<\/a>, the electronic online forum for the Digital Humanities. Following Mark Finlayson’s announcement of the “Computational Models of Narrative<\/a>” workshop at Hamburg University, 3-6 August 2013 (I’m honored to be a co-host) a debate arose as to whether computational sciences and AI on the one side, and the traditional humanities on the other could really be brought into fruitful contact – or whether either side was rather preoccupied with defending its turf.  In his HUMANIST posting 27.124 Willard McCarty then raised the question: “Usually when we say “I am of two minds about that” we take the person simply to be undecided. I wonder if we digital humanists might think of ourselves as being perpetually undecided?” – Here’s my reply of 16 June 2013:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

————————–<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let me add just two quotes to Willard\u2019s collection. Both are by the same (German) author, and both date some 130 years before C.P. Snow, around 1820\/1830. This is the first:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00bbIch kann ein Differentiale finden, und einen Vers machen; sind das nicht die beiden Enden der menschlichen F\u00e4higkeit?\u00ab (\u201eI can identify a differential, and I can make a verse; are these not the two peaks of human competence?\u201c)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Against the backdrop of the new, evolving natural sciences and referring back to Leibniz\u2019 differential calculus as one of the most abstract mathematical break throughs, the German Romantic poet Heinrich von Kleist tries to uphold \u2013 or rather, re-vitalize \u2013 the Humanist idea of a unified culture of scientific knowledge and Arts, of a dialect of formal mathematical abstraction and subjective \u201cverse\u201d that merges representation and emotion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, Kleist already has the idea of declaring this holistic philosophical and epistemological stance as a potential methodology \u2013 for him it is not just a personal vision. In another letter, he writes: \u201eOne could distinguish two classes of men: those who are capable of metaphors, and those who are capable of formulae. Those who are capable of both are too few; they do not form a class.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problems and hick ups that we encounter in our interdisciplinary discourse among \u201ccomputationalists\u201d and \u201chumanists\u201d were thus reflected upon long before computers as we know them emerged (OK, the idea of a computer did of course already exist \u2013 Leibniz again).  So let\u2019s face it: technology really only plays a marginal role in this epistemological and methodological exchange and meeting\/clashing of minds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is more important, I believe, is the conceptual and functional distinction which we need to reflect over and over again.  To me this distinction is demarcated by two fault lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One, the methodological centre of gravity in the humanities is hermeneutics: trying to understand and interpret phenomena in terms of their relevance and impact on humanity, and analysing and modelling these phenomena as experiences that are historically contingent. And because of that, whatever we do and whatever knowledge (or nonsense) we produce in the Humanities is \u2018indexical\u2019 \u2013 it points back at the interpreting subject and at the society that grapples with the phenomena at hand. To make matters even more complicated, that (perceived or real \u2018knowledge\u2019) influences the interpreting observer in a dynamic fashion. Now of course Heisenberg and Einstein formulated insights about the principle constraints of scientific observation that one can read as similar, at least in a somewhat metaphorical sense. But the natural sciences are not pulled towards a hermeneutic centre (what indeed are they being pulled towards? Logic per se? A Platonian worm hole?) I\u2019m pretty certain that my (highly uninformed) musings about the nature of Higgs\u2019 particles will in my life time not produce any response in nature.  Atoms don\u2019t really give a damn about whose observing them and for what purpose \u2013 humans and human societies however do. In other words, though the late 19th<\/sup> century programmatic definition of \u201cGeisteswissenschaften\u201d by Dilthey and others and the forcefully declared dichotomy between the natural and the \u2018moral\u2019\/human sciences may be outdated, but it\u2019s not irrelevant \u2013 and so are other attempts (John Stuart Mill, Hegel, etc. etc..)  at categorizing two ideal types (because that\u2019s what they really are; neither type has ever manifested itself in any science in its pure form) of  methodology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second fault line, as I perceive it, separates the terrain in terms of the concepts of discreteness and continuity. The former is the natural domain of the digital and binary logic \u2013 segment phenomena, count them, find a useful metric, calculate them, model them numerically, etc.  The latter is the prerogative of our human sensual and intellectual apparatus \u2013 we can handle the fuzzy, the ambiguous, the contradictory, the speculative and under defined, and the more robust or consciously reflected our mind\u2019s \u2018home base\u2019, i.e. our sense of identity as a functional construct is, the better we can perform this task. We can decide to hear the melody, not the individual notes \u2013 and we can decide to do the opposite as well. And those who do that often enough realize that it is this power of being able to switch our conceptual outlook at the world that, paradoxically as it may seem, stabilizes the core.  Call it sublimation, call it dialectics \u2013 if nothing else it\u2019s more fun!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The lamented conflict between \u201ccomputationalists\u201d and \u201chumanists\u201d arises as soon as we become afraid of our own courage and shy away from jumping across these two fault lines. Let\u2019s cut through that fear. The task remains, as Kleist so aptly put it, to \u201cbecome capable of both\u201d \u2013 the metaphor and the formula, the verse and the calculus, the musical score as well as the melody and the tear.  That\u2019s a borderline experience, no doubt, and those who prefer to pitch their tent in the comfortable centre of either laager don\u2019t run the risk of questioning their own philosophical, epistemological and ethical identity as easily as the \u2018Stalkers\u2019 (in the Tarkowskian sense).  But thankfully, that\u2019s not the intellectual terrain where the evolving DH \u2018tribe\u2019 hunts and gathers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chris<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is my five cents on an issue recently raised (again) on HUMANIST, the electronic online forum for the Digital Humanities. Following Mark Finlayson’s announcement of the “Computational Models of Narrative” workshop at Hamburg University, 3-6 August 2013 (I’m honored to be a co-host) a debate arose as to whether computational sciences and AI […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=913"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2307,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/913\/revisions\/2307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcmeister.de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}