One way to ask about the place of computing in the humanities is to ask about method. I am reading Plato and the Good by my old prof Rosemary Desjardins. The second chapter nicely teases out Platonic dialectic from the Philebus in a way that can fits what I am going to call neon-baroque theories of folded interruption. Dialectic involves division of the stuff of the continuum into threads (analysis or digitization) and then the weaving of these threads into a fabric (synthesis or processing.) The problem with dialectic that Rosemary teases out is the problem I have with Deleuze’s interruption of the flow – how do you get a flow to divide in the first place?
To the weaver, therefore, we now put our question: what must be the case in order that she be able first to pick out the appropriate fleece, secondly to measure off the divisions that will yield the the threads of warp and woof, and then finally to interweave those threads so as to produce the web of the finished fabric? (p. 42)
Method is not just analysis and synthesis of a continuum, just as humanities computing is not just digitizing and processing the analog. Method, from meta (above, after) + hodos (way, path) involves a capacity to forsee the form you want to generate in the confusion. This is a looking back (after the way) so as to look forward (above the path.) You need to have an idea of what you want to weave before you start dividing (pro-video) and that comes from a recollection of what has been done. Thus Rosemary connects dialectic to Socratic recollection. Method in the humanities is circular – it involves a re-searching – a looking back to look forward. To analyze the flow into discrete digits you need to pull a flow out of chaos – you need to create a particular continuum for sampling, whether it be a flow of of sound or colour.
How does this help us with computing in the humanites? Well … lets go slow here and leave that to later.
Note how Socrates in the Philebus uses the weaving of Penelope as a paradigm for dialectic. Weaving is generative and should not be confused with hacking and mixing which produces monsters.
In every such activity, he (Socrates) is suggesting, having identified as the “stuff” of the making an appropriate indeterminate, a first phase introduces division by separating out appropriate measures so as to yield discrete elements; a second phase combines selected elements in such a way as to generate, produce, or bring into being a genuinely different reality – a reality different in the sense that properties can be predicated of it as an identifiable, functioning whole … (p. 37-39)
This may map on to Brian Cantwell-Smith’s “registration” of objects in a creative way. Plato/Desjardins are interested in poetics – how objects are generated while BCS is trying to bring ontology and computer science together around the nature of the object – the registration of an object in a world.
Rosemary Desjardins Plato and the Good: Illuminating the Darkling Vision Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2004.