Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 239.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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        Date: 2019-09-10 09:32:13+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty 
        Subject: what's 'new'?

Many arguments on behalf of what we do with our machines make claims for
discovering or inventing something new, perhaps even surprising. At one
level novelty is itself not new but is the constant state of affairs. At
another, as in Ecclesiastes, "there is nothing new under the sun". So,
I'd conclude, novelty cannot be an absolute but must be in relation to a
specific way of looking, to a specific perspective or perspectives. It 
depends, we might say, on the filter you have in place at the time. Or 
are there better ways of looking at the new?

I would be very grateful for any recommendations of critical writing on
this subject of the new, especially ones that place it in the contexts
of more than one discipline.

Many thanks.

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty (www.mccarty.org.uk/),
Professor emeritus, Department of Digital Humanities, King's College
London; Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews
(www.tandfonline.com/loi/yisr20) and Humanist (www.dhhumanist.org)




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