Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 250.
            Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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        Date: 2019-09-14 19:23:27+00:00
        From: Sean Yeager 
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.239: what's 'new'?

Dear Willard,

I have no idea what makes something novel, but Ecclesiastes (~450-200 BC)
is a "modern" reinterpretation of Khakheperresenb's complaint from ~2000 BC
(https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_deta
ils.aspx?objectId=176691&partId=1):

"If only I had unknown utterances
and extraordinary verses,
in a new language that does not pass away,
free from repetition,
without a verse of worn-out speech
spoken by the ancestors!"

Here's John Barth's rendering
(https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2011/08/do-i-repeat-
myself/308572/): 

"Would I had phrases that are not known in new language that has
not been used not an utterance which has grown stale, which men of old have
spoken."

Best,
Sean
-----

Sean A. Yeager, M.Sc., M.A.
Ph.D. Candidate in English
The Ohio State University

Former Assistant Professor of Physics and Mathematics
Pacific Northwest College of Art


On Tue, Sep 10, 2019 at 6:29 AM Humanist  wrote:

>                   Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 239.
>             Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>                    Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>                        www.dhhumanist.org
>                 Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
>         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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