This paper discusses the problem of the theoretical-methodological status of Humanities Computing (HC). More particularly it focuses on Computer Philology (CP), i.e. the computational concepts and techniques dedicated to aspects of a philological analysis of literary texts. The question guiding my deliberations is whether CP is a proper ‘Wissenschaft’ in the sense of an emerging fully-fledged discipline, or rather an ancillary discipline, a ‘Hilfswissenschaft’ similar to Statistics or Library Science? One can safely say that the practice of HC has begun to establish itself as an integral part of research and teaching in various disciplines in the Arts and Humanities. But one must also concede that a consensus regarding the methodological-theoretical calibre of our undertakings seems to have evaded us thus far. As a result our own debate seems to retreat more and more onto the safe ground of pragmatism and technology, or in other words: who cares about the methodological and philosophical appraisal of HC - as long as it works? I believe that this is a dangerousely narrow focus - if nothing else, it is at least strategically detrimental to the aim of furthering the institutionalization of Humanities Computing (HC) at universities. The fact that Computer Philology (CP) concerns a more narrowly defined and homogenous array of disciplines than HC makes matters even worse. Any attempt to introduce CP vis à vis the well defined philological disciplines only accentuates the problem of the as yet vague methodological status of this ‘newcomer’. For example, at Hamburg University we recently (October 2001) managed to formally institute a joint ‘Arbeitsgruppe Computerphilologie’ in the Faculties of Computer Science and the Faculty of Languages. We are clear as to our brief: introduce modularized course components in CP into the language and literature curricula. Pragmatic considerations, such as, the aim to equip students with new skills, as well as the current ‘sexyness’ of computer technology work in our favor. But we are nevertheless divided as to the more profound philosophical and methodological arguments on which to ‘sell’ this initiative to colleagues and students. And or differences do indeed boil down to the very question: Is CP a proper ‘Wissenschaft’ - or is it rather a ‘Hilfswissenschaft’? Proponents of the latter position hold that CP cannot be a true discipline as it is neither defined by an exclusive subject matter, or a particular perspective onto such matter, nor ─ and this would seem the more difficult verdict to counter - has it as yet produced a new theory of literature, not to mention a meta-theory reflecting its own axioms and practices. This, for example, is the opinion of my colleagueWalther von Hahn who approaches the question from the perspective of the Linguist and Computer Scientist. Von Hahn illustrates his argument with the following process model:

Figure 1. Figure 1:

The positioning of the CP-block in the bottom left rectangle, and in particular the orientation of the unilinear arrows in this diagramm clearly demonstrate an hierarchical organisation: CP is primarily conceived of by von Hahn as a research practice that is governed by the preceeding formulation of philological desiderata. These desiderata are identified in the course of the inspection of textual data (1) which leads to a formulation of specific research questions and interests (2). Only then can the selection of particular CP-tools (= practices) take place (3). These are now applied to the data (4) and generate a new representation of the textual data which in turn are passed back to the philologist (5) for their eventual interpretation. This interpretation then feeds back into philological theory and methodology. I would now like to juxtapose the underlying hypothesis - e.g., CP as a ‘Hilfswissenschaft’ - with conclusions drawn from my own research into computer based analysis of narrated action, a 7-year project concluded in early 2001 (components of this project were presented at the ALLC conferences Paris 1994 / Virginia 1999.) I initially set out to analyse the structural features of narrated action, with a view to formulating a model of ‘minimal action structures’, that is, the least complex yet logically coherent and context-idenpendent sequence of narrated events. I had found that there was no hard and fast theory on what actually constitutes a coherent piece of narrated action ─ the problem was either being discussed in terms of the conditions for achieving narrative ‘closure’, or in an altogether impressionistic and intuitive way. The only models and partial definitions useful to me were those developed in Formalism and Structuralism, schools of thought to whom the graphic respresentation of narrated action in the form of tree-and-nodes diagrams is fairly common (and owed to generative models imported from structural linguistics). Then I happened to stumble upon an article by Alain Colmerauer which gave a brief description of the AI-language PROLOG and illustrated it by way of a tree diagram. The visual analogy between an action- and a PROLOG-tree pointed me to the conceptual analogy, and the possibility to use a computer to model a minimal coherent action in a narrative, i.e., an EPISODE in the logical sense. Up to this point my project had thus proceeded more or less along steps 1 to 3 of van Hahn’s process model. The real problem ─ and challenge! ─ however was that the two blocks in the bottom left box turned out to be - empty containers: there was no developed theory or model dealing with my particular research problem available in HC/CP; there were also no established practices to apply. The bottom line was that I had to design and program a mark-up tool before I could even begin to model action structures by running a combinatory PROLOG-algorithm on the meta-data. In more abstract terms, I had found myself confronted with what I now regard as the most important methodological principle to be elaborated upon in the methodological-theoretical appraisal of CP. The type of questions considered relevant in the philologies normally require a semantic mark-up of the ‘raw’ textual data; the mere digital representation of non-numeric data (unless it is confined to a purely statistical distribution analysis) does not provide access to semantic phenomena. However, the process of data mark-up, subsequent analysis and modeling of meta-data, and eventual evaluation of the model in itself also presupposes that the philologist has identified not just a philological, but also a ‘computational’ frame of reference - in other words, the computer philologist is not just picking tools from a box and applying these to old questions. He or she must rather reconceptualize the research problem in a new light before the tool’s aspect even comes into play. As for my own project, this is how I would therefore schematize its methodological architecture:

Figure 2. Figure 2:

In comparing von Hahn’s to my own diagram I come to the following conclusions:

• The interdependency between the tools and practices of CP on the one hand, and the textual data on the other involves a hidden ‘third party’ - a conceptual frame of reference novel to the philologies.
• The two-step representational transformation from textual data to meta-data, and then from meta-data to philological interpretation, therefore cannot be thought of as governed exclusively by conceptual models drawn from philological theory and methodology. The import of the ‘foreign’ conceptual model informs the entire research architecture throughout; it is as essential to the design of the transformational processes as it is to the eventual interpretation of the transforms generated.
• The key intellectual prospect of the development and integration of CP into the methodological ambit of the philologies proper is not the fact that, because of deploying computer technology, one can in certain cases analyze and model textual data faster, more coherently, or on the basis of more explicit (and thus transparent) interpretive and/or cognitive algorithms. What seems far more important is that we are offered new frames of reference as to how to conceptualize and model text-based phenomena.
• Computer Philology undisputedly ‘has’ tools and practices - but it ‘is’ more than these: neither a proper ‘Wissenschaft’, nor an a-theroretical ‘Hilfswissenschaft’, its methodological status is that of a new philological heuristics.

Part of the problem of how to adequately define the methodological status of HC and CP might, in fact, stem from the tendency to confound two meanings of the term ‘computer’. When we focus on tools and practices in CP we refer to the machine ‘computer’ in a very literal sense - hence the pragmatists’ attempt to define CP per se in this vein. But ‘computer’ is also a metaphor, like ‘book’ or ‘image’, that stands for a particular mode and method of symbolic representation. In the philologist’s case it is a metaphor for a very specific reconceptualization of the phenomenon of ‘text based meaning’: one that aims at bridging the gap between the qualifiable, and the quantifiable. Whether that ‘metaphor’ is run on a Cray or on paper and pencil is not really the key question.