The History of the Humanities as a Discipline

From a blogpost by Floris Solleveld:

"The history of the humanities considered as a whole is still a young discipline. While there are well over a hundred institutes and graduate schools in the history of science, or the history and philosophy of science, for example, there is nothing comparable for the humanities. Equally, there is a very little reference to a “history of the sciences and humanities.” In the case of the humanities, the typical pattern has been for the history of each discipline to be written separately by practitioners in that discipline — e.g., the history of linguistics by linguists, the history of philology by philologists, and the history of historiography by historians. As a consequence, the strong interrelations that have existed historically between different branches of the humanities (and between the humanities and the sciences) have been hidden from view, along with the fact that earlier in history these disciplines did not exist as such. [...]"

Read here the full blogpost on 4humanities.org.

Discussion about humanities 3.0 at Center for Creation, Content and Technology

On May 16, Charles van den Heuvel will critically discuss the transition from humanities 2.0 to 3.0 that I announced in my inaugural lecture and in the BMGN special issue on Digital History. Here's the abstract:

"In the BMGN Digital History issue of December 2013 Inger Leemans, Andreas Fickers and Marnix Beyen all questioned Rens Bod’s views on the transition expressed in his oration from “humanities 2.0” ( mainly to be read as the use of pattern recognition with digital tools) to “humanities 3.0” (in which digital methods would be reconciled with hermeneutic methods). Although Bod’s rebuttal : “Who is afraid of Patterns” made clear that the gap between his views and the ones of his reviewers was perhaps not so wide as their provocative titles might suggest, I share the critique that this transition entails more than Bod seems to suggest. One of the reasons why this process might be more complex than expected is that we are dealing with various uncertainties linked to the scale and nature of our data and differences in research practices. In this presentation I want to discuss some visualizations approaching uncertainties from various perspectives. I will plead for the creation of an experimental setting as part of the CHAT initiative in which humanist scholars and computer/information scientists together can test the handling of uncertainties in the digital humanities in a systematic way and create a tool that visualizes them from multiple perspectives."

For more information, click here.

De Hereniging van Alfa en Bèta?

Ooit was er geen verschil tussen natuurwetenschap en geesteswetenschap. Galileo, Kepler, Huygens en Newton hielden zich zowel bezig met de studie der natuur als met de studie van oude teksten. Maar vanaf de 19e eeuw zijn de twee gebieden uit elkaar gegroeid. Terwijl de natuur in precieze wiskundige vergelijkingen bleek te passen, gold dit niet voor de producten van de menselijke geest. Dit leidde ertoe dat de geesteswetenschappen zich meer en meer gingen bezighouden met interpretatie, terwijl natuurwetenschappers zich richtten op het wetmatige.

Op de Bètabreak van 21 mei zal ik echter een lans breken voor de hereniging van beide activiteiten. Bètawetenschappers zouden zich meer kunnen richtten op interpretatie (wat ze besmuikt ook al doen -- denk bijvoorbeeld aan het antropisch principe in de sterrenkunde), terwijl alfawetenschappers zich meer zouden kunnen bezighouden met de zoektocht naar patronen en naar het wetmatige. Dit laatste is recentlijk mogelijk geworden dankzij de massale digitalisering van literatuur, kunstwerken, muziekstukken, historische bronnen en nog veel meer. Kortom, alfa en bèta kunnen hernieuwd naar elkaar toegroeien, ter wederzijds voordeel, zonder iets te hoeven inleveren!

Zie hier voor meer info.