Marked up to be included in the ACH/ALLC 2005 Conference Abstracts book.
None
In bringing the humanities and computing together, the question of how computer
The standard way of construing computer science focuses on combinatorics, syntax and algorithms. Its guiding question is
The first paper discusses the prospects for partnership between the humanities and computing from the alternative perspective afforded by
The second paper illustrates the key characteristics and potential for EM for the humanities with reference to a projected modelling exercise addressing the Erlkoenig theme (as represented in the work of Goethe, Schubert and Liszt). It also highlights how each of six varieties of modelling identified by McCarty in (2004) can be represented within an EM model.
The final paper discusses the implications of EM with reference to McCarty's account of the key role for modelling in the humanities (2005), and considers these in relation to James's philosophic attitude of radical empiricism
Meurig Beynon and Steve Russ
The term
When we trouble to take a close look, rather than simply to relegate computing below stairs, its relationship to the humanities seems deeply troubling: on the one hand, flawless manipulation of data; on the other, contingent interpretation. We are reminded of the familiar
Modern developments in practical computing present a serious challenge to computer science as it is currently understood. The sharply differentiated treatment of formal and informal meanings of programs is oriented towards applications in which mathematics plays a central role. This traditional view of computation made good sense in its historical context, when the archetypal role for the computer was automating routine processes
In acknowledging and exploiting the semantic impact of holistic experience, computing practice has made a transition that our science of computing has not. Trying to give a mathematical account of computing is like trying to account for musical experience solely by music theory. This motivates us to reappraise computing from a totally different perspective in which
The objections to this reorientation centre on perceived fundamental distinctions between kinds of experience. In commonsense thinking about computing and the humanities, for instance, we distinguish experience of physical reality, experience of the virtual world, experience that can be communicated — formally or informally — through language, experience that can be authenticated by scholarship or experiment, and affective experience such as is associated with the appreciation of works of art. Attributing an absolute status to these distinctions endorses the familiar fractured caricature of the relationship between sciences and arts, at the ends of a spectrum of experience leading from the material world to the miraculous. Both computing and the humanities have made significant intellectual and practical contributions to challenging the status of these distinctions. Consider, for instance, the ontological issues addressed by Gooding in his discussion of the status of virtual experiments in science, and the analysis of poetic treatments of the metaphysical and the material in Heaney. The alternative vision for computing endorsed by
This section takes up the idea of reappraising computing from a perspective in which experience rather than logic plays a privileged role. This involves turning from the relationship between computing and the humanities as disciplines to consider the more concrete relationship between humans and computers.
Through their enormous flexibility and power, and the ethereal medium of electronics, computers have greatly extended the machine metaphor. The activity of programming allows us to make new
There is, however, a perspective on computers and their use that is independent of the machine metaphor and more fundamental. It has always been present in computing but has been so over-shadowed by the viewpoint, and usefulness, of machine computing that it has often been overlooked.
Before making any use of the computer I need to be able to relate what I see and do on the computer with my situation in my own world outside the computer. For this I must be able to present a part of my world, or some phenomenon, on the computer in a recognisable fashion. When this is a matter of using the computer in a machine mode (e.g. for e-mail or word-processing) this act of representation is very familiar. But it is now possible to make computer models with which we can deliberately dwell upon our personal understanding of something of interest for its own sake, and without any functional use yet in mind.
This role for the computer of building artefacts with which to think and explore has been facilitated by the improving technological management of the electronic medium. This has become, like paint, or music or language, a medium for self-expression. The fluidity and flexibility of the medium make it a potential match for close integration with the
The contrast then, with the machine mode of the computer, is the capacity of computer artefacts to offer us direct,
Some of the early pioneers of electronic computing had a vision not unlike that of human computing. For example, many of the sentiments of the enthusiasts for electronic analogue computing (Small) resonate strongly with our ideas, and Licklider looked forward to a time when men and computers would work in intimate association.
The
Meurig Beynon
A companion paper (Paper 1) argues the need for a radically different perspective on computing that is particularly relevant to its role in the humanities. A key notion is dispelling the idea of an absolute duality in experience, and reinterpreting computing with respect to distinctions that rest on how experience is characterised. We can understand how this might work by recognising that semantic relations similar to those that arise in computer programming exist in the humanities. The pianist plays Chopin, but the score resembles a program. But where the computer scientist views the program as essentially defined by its precise abstract operational semantics, the musician — whether composer, pianist or analyst — takes a much more liberated view of the meaning of the musical score. The pianist is deemed to play a Chopin sonata, even though there are some wrong notes. Playing Chopin and playing the piano are both human skills that clearly admit no exact ultimate level of attainment, and the counterpoint between the two is a commonplace theme in music analysis and criticism. Particularly pertinent in this context is Mahler's remark that what is best in music is not to be found in the notes
A better understanding of the distinction between a musical score and a conventional computer program helps us motivate an alternative approach to computer-based modelling that can do fuller justice to the concept of humanities computing — that of
She played Chopin's Revolutionary Study
She used the piano to execute Chopin's Revolutionary Study.
The principles of
a temporary state in the process of coming to know.
The case study has been chosen to highlight a number of key issues: the fundamental significance of the shift in perspective towards the radical empiricist outlook of William James (1996) rooted in the idea that 'one experience knows another'; pertinent aspects of
The importance of a radical empiricist stance stems from the need to account for a treatment of meanings in the humanities that is far beyond the scope — though not perhaps the aspirations — of the formal semanticists in computer science and AI (Smith 1987). Consider the audacity of the following extract from Maurice Brown's commentary on the
Even more remarkable, as was first pointed out by Sir Donald Tovey in a superb programme note on the song, is the treatment of the pianoforte when the child speaks. During the rest of the song we are observers: we watch the ride, we hear the child's voice and the father's reassuring answers. But only the child hears the Erlking, and the rocking, almost lulling, movement of the pianoforte accompaniment is the child's experience of the motion of the galloping horse, the warm protection of his father's arms, while he trembles at the sinister invitation. When he cries out, we revert to observers and the clamour of the hoofs, the rush of the wind, break again on our ears.
From a technical modelling perspective, Erlkoenig is a rich source of instances of agency, dependency and observation.
The status of EM as a radical generalisation of modelling with spreadsheets makes it possible to envisage a role for modelling extending that illustrated by McCarty in his
Meurig Beynon and Willard McCarty
In developing a persuasive philosophical stance on humanities computing, the first task is to relate its aspirations to the current vision of computer science. In (Paper 1), Beynon and Russ propose that an alternative science of computing is needed to bring computing and the humanities into a more fulfilling relationship. McCarty (2004) identifies a better understanding of what modelling is
Informally, McCarty's
As McCarty's careful analysis of terminology (McCarty 2004) indicates, the dynamic and provisional quality of the model argues against describing the model as experience of the model
Though it is accepted usage to refer to the spreadsheet as a model of a financial situation, this is not the sense in which
decisive criteria
Where consistency is concerned, it must be recognised that the experience a computer generates is not explicitly specified in every respect — at any rate not in the same sense that an abstract computation is explicitly specified.
the principle of SIN
Where manipulability is concerned, it may seem that we can manipulate representations effectively using a computer because we can modify programs. The notorious difficulty of adapting conventional programs to meet new requirements is evidence that this contention cannot be taken at face value. And where one experience knows another
stop execution of program P, fix line 235, recompile, run program P 'to the same point as it was before' — whoops ... I've introduced another bug — etc etc ...
manipulation ... requires something that can be handled [in] a time-frame sufficiently brief that the emphasis falls on the process rather than its product
the experience of adjusting the computer model should know the experience of adjusting the interpretation of the referent
The decisive emphasis of
the most intimate conjunctive relation .... that experienced between terms that form states of mind
what experience knows another in-the-now
what if?
[that we may] return to the past the past's own present, a present with all the possibilities still in it, with all the consequences of actions still unknown
In appreciating the shift of perspective in
the process semantics
blind variation
without complete or adequate guidance
Several intriguing philosophical connections identified by McCarty (2005) are ripe for further scholarship and exploration. The suggestive links between
as if
our constructions continue to work, no matter how violent the changes in scientific opinion may be
subjectivity and objectivity are affairs not of what an experience is aboriginally made of, but of its classification
But how the experiences ever get themselves made, or why their characters and relations are just such as appear, we can not begin to understand