FDH-1-1
FDH-1-1: What are Digital Humanities?
Core theses explored in this chapter
- As humanities disciplines are essentially pursuing a search for patterns and computers are patterns organisers, Digital Humanities have started a profound restructuring of the Humanities disciplines.
1. A first definition: Digital Humanities as a diaphragm zone
1.1. Defining Digital and Humanities
Let us start by decomposing the term "Digital Humanities" into its two components:
> Definition 1 (Soft Definition of Digital Humanities) : Digital Humanities is a diaphragm zone, the encounter of the Digital and the Humanities
What does the term Digital refer to ?
> Definition: Digital systems represent information using discrete values, as opposed to analog systems which represent information using a continuous function.
The word digital comes from digit and digitus (finger in Latin) because fingers are used for discrete counting. Digital as an abstract way of looking at the real, analogous, world.
As computers are based on digital systems, by extension the term "Digital" has been used to described activities linked with computers.
Humanities have been defined by the C19 German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey as areas of knowledge that live beyond physical sciences. They include a series of disciplines: ancient and modern languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion, visual and performing arts, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law, linguistics. This definition by extension is one of the most consensual.
> Definition : Humanities are a set of disciplines: ancient and modern languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion, visual and performing arts, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law, linguistics.
Do these disciplines have certainly something in common, beyond the fact that they deal with human productions ?
> Hypothesis 1 : Humanities are characterised by a method different from Physical Sciences.
The question is: What is this common method?
Scholars that work in the Humanities are called humanists, but they are not necessarily humanists in the philosophical world, like one would say of Erasmus or Petrarch — who are embodiments of the Renaissance idea of humanism, a development of human virtues, whereby a philosophical and knowledge-based understanding of the world.
2. Humanities Computing: breaking boundaries between disciplines
2.1. The progresses of Humanities Computing
Humanities Computing (a term essentially used before 2000) was about applying computational approaches to Humanities research questions, in fields as different as literature, history, or economy.
As Humanities Computing progressed, it highlighted more similarities (databases, algorithms and tools, pattern recognition, etc.) between disciplines that were using digital methods than differences.
The successes of Humanities Computing showed the potential of transversal approaches; and in doing so, led to the shattering and dissolving of hitherto well-established disciplinary frontiers.
Interestingly, in 2020, a new term Computational Humanities was relaunched to describe serious applications of computational approaches to Humanities research questions.
2.2. A common trait between Humanities disciplines: finding patterns
Indeed, even if they are not always aware of it, most research in the humanities shares the same objective: finding or organising patterns (be them linguistic, musical, historical, etc.)
> Hypothesis 2 : Humanities methods are characterised by the search for patterns
Computers, on the other hand, can be defined not only as digital systems but also, more conceptually, as pattern organisers. Therefore they have the potential to operate a restructuring of knowledge in the Humanities, which will naturally grow from this ability to recognize patterns.
> Definition : Computers are pattern organisers
2.3. Humanities methods have inspired computer science techniques
But the link between Computer Science and Humanities is deeper than a simple alignment of the objectives of humanities and the abilities of computer science.
Noam Chomsky, an American linguist, established the connection between Linguistics and Computer Science. He considered Panini as his spiritual father. Panini invented (around the 5th century BCE) a formal system of rules to describe Sanskrit — the first example of a formal grammatical system. Panini's grammar can be considered a recursive algorithmic system of rules.
This proto-system was used nearly 2500 years later as the underlying formalism of programming languages. Chomsky’s way of defining grammar, as a set of formal rules, and inspired by Panini, served as a model for the structure of the ALGOL compiler.
This is an example of the permeability of the boundary between humanities and the digital world: a close intertwining of an ancient grammatical protosystem and a pioneering programming language.
The division between the digital and humanist worlds is a construct. Key ideas in the history of computer science do come from the humanities, rather than electronics or engineering.
> Hypothesis : Humanities methods have inspired Computer Science techniques
3. The invention of the "Digital Humanities"
3.1. From Humanities Computing to Digital Humanities
The terminological change from Humanities Computing to Digital Humanities has been attributed to John Unsworth, Ray Siemens and Susan Schreibman, editors of the monograph A Companion to Digital Humanities (2004).
There is, though, an important difference between Humanities Computing and Digital Humanities: the latter has at its core this bi-directionality — DH ambitions to lead to a better understanding of both computing and the humanities.
In that sense, it goes beyond just applying computing to humanities questions. As it also aims to understand digital operations from a humanities point-of-view, it lies in understanding the deep link between the two disciplines.
3.2. Practice over theory
A shift in focus was observed in the field around 2005: many researchers in Digital Humanities started to insist on the importance of practice over theory.
One of the early-stage specificity of this community was the organization of the THATCamp (The Humanities and Technology Camp): an open conference, with inexpensive meetings where humanists and technologists of all skill levels could learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot. The slogan of the THATCamps was “More hack, less yacks”.
In the same line, Claire Warwick suggested a very open definition: If you think you are doing it, then you probably are.
3.3. How to translate "Digital Humanities"
Thanks notably to this hands-on approach, between 2010 and 2020, Digital Humanities expanded as a global multilingual phenomenon, beyond the English-speaking countries where it had first appeared. (Example: The Digital Humanities 2014 in Lausanne Call for Paper has been translated in 14 languages by volunteers.)
This raised the question on how to translate the term Digital Humanities in other languages. In Italy, the term "Informatica umanistica" is still used although it is much closer to Humanities Computing than Digital Humanities.
In the French speaking world, there is still a quite intense debate. The official translation of Digital in French is “numérique”. So, many French researchers use the term “Humanités numériques”, as opposed to the English-influenced Humanités digitales.
In French-speaking Switzerland, however, the term “Humanités digitales” has been preferred because of the richer reference to “digitus” (the finger) and the related concepts of doigté. Digital Humanities does indeed include a lot of hands-on approaches: Humanities that you do not only with your brains but also with your fingers.
4. "Digital Humanities" vs. Digital Studies and Studies about Digital Culture
4.1. Digital Studies
The late French philosopher Bernard Stiegler argued that the term Digital Humanities is too narrow and that the effects of “digitalization” go beyond the field of the Humanities to affect all the knowledge fields.
He preferred the term Digital Studies by opposition to Analog Studies, arguing that digitalization processes affect all fields of research and not just humanities, from physics, to geology and biology. And the effect of this paradigm shift ought to be studied in order to answer the question: what does the digital do to knowledge?
4.2. Studies about Digital Culture
“Studies about Digital Culture” (including for instance Cultural Analytics) attempt to better understand the impact of the Digital Revolution on all aspects of our culture. Most DH scholars would consider studies about digital culture a subpart of Digital Humanities.
5. Conclusion
5.1. Summary
Humanities and Computer Science have long standing intrinsic links. These worlds are not as separated as we may think they are.
In a first approach, Digital Humanities can be approximately defined as the intersection zone between the Digital and the Humanities. A subdomain of Digital Studies, Digital Humanities would include Humanities Computing (from which they stemmed) and Studies about Digital Culture.
We are currently witnessing an important evolution in knowledge: As digital methods tend to dissolve frontiers, some reorganisation of knowledge and practices have started and new communities of practice have emerged.
Beyond the question for defining Digital Humanities, it could be interesting to follow the profiles and careers of the “Digital Humanists”. They define the field by what they did and what they will do. Remember, "if you think you are doing it, then you probably are".
5.2. In the next chapter
Some researchers have tried to define Digital Humanities as a field of its own (just like Biology or Geometry), and not just the membrane between the two (relatively) well-defined disciplines that are Computing and the Humanities. We will look in the next chapter how this is possible.
Selected readings
- Bod, A new histories of the humanities
- Vidya Niwas Mishra, The Descriptive Technique of Panini
- Milad Doueihi, Pour un humanisme