Volume 18 Number 3
The Model is the Message: Modelling and the Future of Humanities Scholarship
Abstract
The increasing prevalence of computer models within humanities research has raised a number of challenges for humanities scholars. Chief among them are the ways in which computational modelling fundamentally transforms the conventional methodologies and epistemological frameworks that have long defined research within the humanities. In Modelling Between Digital and Humanities: Thinking in Practice (2023), Arianna Ciula, Øyvind Eide, Cristina Marras, and Patrick Sahle evaluate the impact of this paradigm shift on humanities scholarship and varying strategies for addressing the challenges that it presents. In particular, the authors take up the idea of formulating a new digital humanities mode of thinking that can enable the humanities to adapt and thrive in the digital age while retaining their core values.
Introduction
Computer Modelling's Challenge for the Humanities
It was, ultimately, the humanities, with their focus on conceptualization, interpretation, and narrative construction that would lay the epistemological groundwork needed for the development and application of modelling techniques across various disciplines.The use of models and the process of modelling have a long tradition in the humanities. Going back to early modern Europe, the use of models in what could be called scholarship in “the Humanities” included modelling in natural philosophy, which later developed into the natural sciences. [Ciula et al. 2023, 21]
Computers do not just change objects of study, but they transform them into something entirely new and different from what they were before. Following the book's argument, their transformation necessitates a new digital humanities mode of thinking that can account for the shift and specifically address the loss of contextualization that occurs when humanities research is subjected to computational methods. This loss of contextualization presents a significant challenge to humanities research in that it leads to the very loss of cultural knowledge and context that is necessary to conduct humanities research in the first place. As systems design engineer and media theorist Wendy Chun has explained, formalization routinely leads to the conflation of correlation with causation because the complex socio-cultural factors that influence data are lost. As a result, the underlying causes behind the data are misinterpreted and obfuscated [Chun 2021]. In Chun's words, “If almost anything can be shown to be real, if almost any correlation can be discovered, how do we know what is true?” [Chun 2021, 51].In these processes of modelling for operationalisation, the change of the sources (loss of variation, gain of processability) thus enables formal processing and at the same time highlights what cannot (within the limitations of specific processing methods) be formalised and thus is left behind. [Ciula et al. 2023, 4]
“Thinking in Practice”
The Visual Turn
With the result that technologies of parallel computing and those of a pluri-dimensional visualization are inculcating modes of thought and self, and facilitating imaginings of agency, whose parallelisms are directly antagonistic to the intransigent monadism, linear coding, and intense seriality inseparable from alphabetic writing. [Rotman 2008, 3]
In such an environment, play or experimentation as opposed to verbal reasoning serve as the primary research tool, allowing for entirely new embodied and hands-on modes of exploration. That shift towards embodied exploration in digital environments will undoubtedly open up new avenues for understanding and interpretation in humanities scholarship.In order to re-establish the main original purpose of the collection, it was necessary to create new objects, that is, to transfer their functionality to new objects. The decision was made not to make a physical replica, but rather to establish the new object in another medium. [Ciula et al. 2023, 109]
Works Cited
Recommendations
DHQ is testing out three new article recommendation methods! Please explore the links below to find articles that are related in different ways to the one you just read. We are interested in how these methods work for readers—if you would like to share feedback with us, please complete our short evaluation survey. You can also visit our documentation for these recommendation methods to learn more.
SPECTER Recommendations
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- Tractable Tensions: A Review of Digital Humanities: Knowledge and Critique in a Digital Age by David M. Berry and Anders Fagerjord, 2024, Onyekachi Henry Ibekwe, University of Nigeria
- Towards a Conceptual Framework for the Digital Humanities, 2012, Paul S. Rosenbloom, Department of Computer Science and Institute for Creative Technologies, University of Southern California
- Circling around texts and language: towards pragmatic modelling in Digital Humanities, 2016, Arianna Ciula, University of Roehampton; Cristina Marras, Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
- Beyond Gutenberg: Transcending the Document Paradigm in Digital Humanities, 2014, David Schloen, University of Chicago; Sandra Schloen, University of Chicago
- Digital Humanities: On Finding the Proper Balance between Qualitative and Quantitative Ways of Doing Research in the Humanities, 2013, Helle Porsdam, University of Copenhagen
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- Twisty Little Passages Almost All Alike: Applying the FRBR Model to a Classic Computer Game, 2010, Jerome McDonough, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Matthew Kirschenbaum, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland; Doug Reside, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland; Neil Fraistat, Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities, University of Maryland; Dennis Jerz, English — New Media Journalism, Seton Hill University
- The Technical Evolution of Vannevar Bush’s Memex, 2008, Belinda Barnet, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne
- Circling around texts and language: towards pragmatic modelling in Digital Humanities, 2016, Arianna Ciula, University of Roehampton; Cristina Marras, Istituto per il Lessico Intellettuale Europeo e Storia delle Idee, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche
- Towards 3D Scholarly Editions: The Battle of Mount Street Bridge, 2019, Costas Papadopoulos, Maastricht University; Susan Schreibman, Maastricht University
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- Stitching the Fragmented: Feminist Maker Pedagogy and Immersive Technologies for Cultural Learning, 2022, Mélanie Péron, University of Pennsylvania; Meaghan Moody, University of Rochester; Vickie Karasic, Bryn Mawr College
- Another Type of Human Narrative: Visualizing Movement Histories Through Motion Capture Data and Virtual Reality, 2021, Eugenia S. Kim, The Hong Kong Academy for Performing Arts
- Applied Digital Humanities and the Creative Industries in the United Kingdom, 2022, James Smithies, King's College London; Sarah Atkinson, King's College London; Elliott Hall, King's Digital Lab
- Introducing Booksnake: A Scholarly App for Transforming Existing Digitized Archival Materials into Life-Size Virtual Objects for Embodied Interaction in Physical Space, using IIIF and Augmented Reality, 2025, Sean Fraga, University of Southern California; Christy Ye, University of Southern California; Henry Huang, University of Southern California; Zack Sai, University of Southern California; Michael Hughes, University of Southern California; April Yao, University of Southern California; Samir Ghosh, University of California, Santa Cruz