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Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 352.
Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
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Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Bill Benzon
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.349: what we're not ready for (64)
[2] From: Tim Smithers
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.346: what we're not ready for (118)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2019-10-27 10:11:36+00:00
From: Bill Benzon
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.349: what we're not ready for
Comments below:
> On Oct 27, 2019, at 2:53 AM, Humanist wrote:
>
[snip]
> --[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-10-26 14:52:47+00:00
> From: Jim Rovira
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.346: what we're not ready for
>
> PS The link to Bill's paper needs to be corrected to:
>
http://academia.edu/235110/Literary_Morphology_Nine_Propositions_in_a_Naturalist
> _Theory_of_Form
>
> And the link below appears to be dead. The blog is down. But I think this
> is it here:
Don't know what the problem is, but my blog, New Savanna, is not down just the
moment I'm writing this note, though occasionally the underlying platform,
Google's Blogger, does go down.
But this other link is fine, though it lacks the prefatory comments I added at
my blog. More importantly, though, the blog is Replicated Typo, which is a group
blog by younger scholars, mostly linguists. Some of them were graduate students
when the blog started, but now have degrees and gigs. If you're interested in
what some younger scholars think about linguistics and about cultural evolution,
Replicated Typo is a good blog, though it's not been so active in the past
couple years. Thanks for linking to it, Jim.
> http://www.replicatedtypo.com/whats-in-a-name-digital-humanities-dh-and-
> computational-linguistics/11460.html
>
> Jim R
>
>
>> "What's in a Name? -- 'Digital Humanities' [#DH] and 'Computational
>> Linguistics' and here's the link: https://new-
>> savanna.blogspot.com/2016/05/whats-in-name-digital-humanities-dh-and.html
>>
>
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-10-26 14:47:56+00:00
> From: Jim Rovira
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.346: what we're not ready for
>
> Thanks for responding, Bill. Of course I plan to read your paper soon. I
> hope you see from my previous post that I would never take issue with this
> comment:
>
> "In the post where I raised issue I very carefully said 'literary studies
> people could begin ... to think about literary processes as somehow, in
> some measure, computational in kind.' I didn't say that literature was
> computational in kind, but only that it was 'somehow, in some measure'
> computational."
>
>
> But then further down in the same post you slip into this language:
>
> "In that paper I set forth some ideas about the computational nature of
> literary form that are the result of three decades of research."
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2019-10-27 06:57:51+00:00
From: Tim Smithers
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.346: what we're not ready for
Dear Bill,
I'll retreat from a conversation I should perhaps not have
stepped into, but before I go I must make two apologies; one
for a transgression; the other for a fault.
I am sorry for saying your work is of no consequence and a
waste of time. This I most certainly did not mean to do.
I also apologise for not being able to see where, in what I
wrote, I said this. Fault enough, probably, to disqualify me
from conversations about literary matters.
I did spend a long night reading your "Literary Morphology:
Nine Propositions in a Naturalist Theory of Form" though, and
before I dared to step in to your conversation with Jim. I
found it to be an impressive illustration of the elastic use
of the notions of form and computation.
I'll revert to observer form, and hesitate before submitting
further computations.
Your sincerely,
Tim
> On 26 Oct 2019, at 08:44, Humanist wrote:
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 346.
> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
> --[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Date: 2019-10-25 17:19:27+00:00
> From: Bill Benzon
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.337: what we're not ready for
>
>
>> On Oct 23, 2019, at 1:28 AM, Humanist wrote:
>>
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 33, No. 337.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, King's College London
>> Hosted by King's Digital Lab
>> www.dhhumanist.org
>> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>> Date: 2019-10-22 15:22:43+00:00
>> From: Jim Rovira
>> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 33.336: what we're not ready for
>>
>> Great response, Bill, and thank you for the details and clarification. I
>> correct myself -- I'm not aware of that kind of work being widely conducted
>> either.
>
> I appreciate the apology, Jim. Beyond that, however, I am at a loss as to how
to
> respond to your further remarks and to the more recent and more extensive
> remarks by Tim Smithers, which I have appended below.
>
> In the post where I raised issue I very carefully said "literary studies
people
> could begin ... to think about literary processes as somehow, in some measure,
> computational in kind." I didn't say that literature was computational in
> kind, but only that it was "somehow, in some measure" computation. And then
> -- this is the important part -- I have a reference and a link to a paper I
> published a bit over a decade ago: Literary Morphology: Nine Propositions in a
> Naturalist Theory of Form (PsyArt: An Online Journal for the Psychological
Study
> of the Arts, 2006, article 060608). It's available online here: https://www.ac
>
ademia.edu/235110/Literary_Morphology_Nine_Propositions_in_a_Naturalist_Theory_o
> f_Form
>
> In that paper I set forth some ideas about the computational nature of
literary
> form that are the result of three decades of research. I've been thinking
> about this for a long time and my views are fairly sophisticated. What you and
> Tim have, in effect, told me is that that work is of no consequence, that I've
> wasted my time. How can I respond to your uninformed comments except to ignore
> them? If neither of you have time to read a long and difficult paper, I
> understand that. As far as I am concerned, however, that implies that you are
> not prepared to engage the issue in a serious way. OK. You're busy, you've
> got your own research program, teaching, family, and so forth. You plate is
> full.
>
> But here's the problem: As far as I can tell, the whole of digital humanities,
> or whatever it is, is pretty much like that. Here are some remarks I used to
> preface and old post I recently bumped to the top of the queue at my blog:
>
>> "If you read far enough you'll see me point out that many of the tools
> currently used in computational criticism have their origins in machine
> translation, yet the effort to understand language computationally has all but
> been ignored in computational criticism and DH more generally. Since the field
> as chosen "digital humanities" as its name, however fitfully, it seems to me
> this calls for a bit of deconstructive questioning: Why ignore (some of) the
> deepest lines of investigation implied by the term you've adopted for your
> inquiry? Is being au courant so important that you're willing to toss the baby
> overboard so that you can splash about in the bath more freely? I leave such
> analysis to the reader."
>
> In that post I quote from some articles Matthew Kirschenbaum has written about
> the origins of the term, "digital humanities". The post is entitled
> "Whatâ's in a Name? -- 'Digital Humanities' [#DH] and 'Computational
> Linguistics' and here's the link: https://new-
> savanna.blogspot.com/2016/05/whats-in-name-digital-humanities-dh-and.html
>
>
> Best,
>
> BB
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