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ISR is a quarterly journal that aims to set contemporary and historical developments in the sciences and technology into their wider social and cultural context and to illuminate their interrelations with the humanities and arts. It seeks out contributions that measure up to the highest excellence in scholarship but that also speak to an audience of intelligent non-specialists. It actively explores the differing trajectories of the disciplines and practices in its purview, to clarify what each is attempting to do in its own terms, so that constructive dialogue across them is strengthened. It focuses whenever possible on conceptual bridge-building and collaborative research that nevertheless respect disciplinary variation. ISR features thematic issues on broad topics attractive across the disciplines and publishes special issues derived from wide-ranging interdisciplinary colloquia and conferences.

Thursday 22 September 2011

Guest review by James G.R. Cronin, University College Cork, Ireland.


Review: HIDDEN HISTORIES: SYMPOSIUM ON METHODOLOGIES FOR THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES, ca. 1949-1980, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE LONDON, 17 SEPTEMBER 2011 (Sponsored by HKFZ and UCLDH)

University College London's historic Main Building was the venue for ‘Hidden Histories’, a one day international symposium, held on Saturday 17 September 2011, to discuss methodologies for a history of computing in the humanities. Earlier this year, Julianne Nyhan and Anne Welsh of University College London's Department of Information Studies and Centre for Digital Humanities (UCLDH), were awarded funding from the University of Trier’s Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Forschungszentrum (HKFZ) for a project entitled ‘Digital Humanities as Wissensraum: uncovering hidden histories (c. 1949-1980)’. The time scale chosen to frame this project is deeply significant for the history of humanities computing. In a canonical reading of its history this thirty year period covers the scope of Busa’s ‘Index Thomisticus’ project. Roberto Busa, an Italian Jesuit priest, who died aged 98 on 9 August 2011, is credited with pioneering hypertext and the application of computing to humanities research. In 1949 Busa had proposed a revolutionary idea to IBM: using computers to study texts, in particular the collected works of medieval theologian St. Thomas Aquinas, a task which was to occupy Busa until 1980. In contrast to the established historical narrative the ‘Hidden Histories’ project seeks to uncover alternative histories, across this defining thirty year period, by sifting through the fragmentary evidence from activities of lesser-known pioneering and ‘early adopter’ practitioners and scholars in humanities computing.
   
At the project’s outset, in February 2011, Nyhan and Welsh, joint principal investigators, had announced their intention to host an international symposium in order to collegially discuss a diversity of approaches to methods underpinning such original and ambitious research. Invited delegates ranged across a veritable transdisciplinary spectrum: information science; computer studies; linguistic studies; historical studies; critical theory; and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
   
Claudine Moulin (University of Trier), pried apart philosophical connotations of ‘Wissensraum’ (spaces of knowledge) for applications to humanities computing. Moulin encourages assembling a ‘typology’ of spatial forms to systematise relationships between the physicality of knowledge space and its knowledge ordering. This process places an emphasis on the centrality of user generation on the production and dissemination of content. Similarly, crowdsourcing makes use of the distributed information flow of the Web, but as Melissa Terras (UCLDH), cautioned, researchers need to ask the right questions if they expect to receive pertinent responses from the ‘hive mind’. In their respective papers, Edward Vanhoutte (Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature, Ghent, Belgium) and Ray Siemens (University of Victoria, Canada, who presented virtually), discussed how explorations of the publication histories of humanities computing textbooks may help researchers to better understand the processes involved in shaping perceptions amongst scholars, educators, and the public from ‘Literary and Linguistic Computing’ through ‘Humanities Computing’ to ‘Digital Humanities’.
   
Is digital humanities a field or a discipline? In his opening keynote, Willard McCarty (Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London and Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney), reminded delegates that digital humanities is ‘imprinted’ with the memory of experiences from the humanities which, in turn, effects perceptions of chronology, narration, and interpretation. The Exhibition Cybernetic Serendipity (London 1968), often considered to be the first major exhibition of computer art, is now nearly forgotten yet it represents the rich seams of connection between the arts and sciences anticipating current interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research.
   
‘Hidden Histories’ will employ oral testimony interpreted through narrative inquiry. Andrew Flinn (UCLDH) who spoke on oral history as a method in historical recovery called attention to the value of listening for the silences in personal stories as an amplification of lived experiences and as a means of shaping generative research questions. I advocated intentional alignment of critical theory to historical studies as an aid to peeling back discursive layers constructing canonical narratives.

The task of capturing processes through the gathering of ephemera was a theme threading through the entire symposium. Vanda Broughton (UCLDH) looked at the lost origins of information science through the nearly forgotten origins of the Classification Research Group, (CRG). Reiterating Flinn, she stressed that losses and lacunae in documentary records can only be fully enriched by experiences articulated through oral statements and witness testimonies. This salient point was stressed in the closing keynote presented by Lou Burnard (Emeritus, Oxford University Computing Services). The thirty year time scale framing the ‘Hidden Histories’ project was significantly underscored by technological transition from main frame to personal computing. Burnard reminded delegates that each phase of humanities computing was culturally mediated by own its technological capabilities. In knitting together an authentic historical critique, Burnard stressed, this determining factor needs due consideration and acknowledgment.
   
Busa’s life work sought to tease out generative research questions with the aid of computer technology. By systematically probing deeper into forgotten fragments ‘Hidden Histories’ seeks to impart an even more generative story.

This section of the ‘Hidden Histories’ project will run until December 2011.
For further information on the project please visit the project homepage http://www.ucl.ac.uk/infostudies/research/hiddenhistories/

Reviewed by James G.R. Cronin, University College Cork, Ireland








Thursday 15 September 2011

Hidden Histories symposium on computing in the Humanities

ISR’s Editor-in-Chief and Book Reviews Editor are involved in a symposium entitled ‘HIDDEN HISTORIES: SYMPOSIUM ON METHODOLOGIES FOR THE HISTORY OF COMPUTING IN THE HUMANITIES c.1949-1980’, which will take place in UCL, on Saturday 17 September sponsored by HKFZ and UCLDH.

The symposium is being organised by Julianne Nyhan and Anne Welsh and is part of a research pilot that they have been undertaking on the history of computing in the Humanities. The application of computing to the Humanities is not new and can be traced back to at least 1949, when Fr Roberto Busa began researching the creation of an index variorum of some 11 million words of medieval Latin in the works of St Thomas Aquinas and related authors. Notes and contributions towards a history of the computer in the Humanities have appeared in recent years; however, our understanding of such developments remains incomplete and largely unwritten.

This project gathers and makes available sources to enable the social, intellectual and cultural conditions that shaped the early take up of computing in the Humanities to be investigated. The project draws on an interdisciplinary method bundle from Oral History, Digital Humanities and Historical-Cultural Studies. With the aim of capturing memories, observations and insights that are rarely recorded in the scholarly literature of the field it carries out interviews with ‘pioneer’ or ‘early adopter’ scholars and practitioners from c. 1949 until 1980 (that is, from main frame computing to the coming of the personal computer). These interviews will be published online in due course and Saturday’s symposium will bring Historians, Information Studies and Digital Humanities scholars together who have either been researching this area or who have expertise in  methodologies that may allow new insights into such histories to be won.

 Presentations include, in the following running order:
  • Opening Keynote: Beyond chronology and profession: discovering how to write a history of the Digital Humanities, Willard McCarty, Department of Digital Humanities, King’s College London; Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. 
  • Knowledge Spaces and Digital Humanities, Claudine Moulin, Universitaet Trier, Germany 
  • Unwriting the history of Humanities Computing, Edward Vanhoutte, Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature – Ghent, Belgium 
  • Crowd sourcing: beyond the traditional boundaries of academic history, Melissa Terras, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 
  • Different stories to be lived and told: recovering Lehmann James Oppenheimer (1868-1916) for the narrative of the Irish Arts & Crafts movement (1894-1925), James G.R. Cronin, School of History & Centre for Adult Continuing Education, University College Cork, Ireland. 
  • Oral History and acts of recovery: humanizing history?, Andrew Flinn, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 
  • Lost origins of Information Science, Vanda Broughton, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 
  • Plus ça change: a historical perspective on the institutional context of Digital Humanities, Claire Warwick, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 
  • (Virtual presentation) DH pioneers and progeny: some reflections on generational accomplishment and engagement in the Digital Humanities, Ray Siemens, Faculty of Humanities, University of Victoria
  • Closing Keynote: Data vs. Text: forty years of confrontation, Lou Burnard, Oxford University Computing Services (Emeritus) 
  • Discussion: towards an oral history of Computing in the Humanities, Chaired by Anne Welsh and Julianne Nyhan, Dept. Information Studies, UCL 
Podcasts of some lectures will be posted online after the even - watch this space!

Wednesday 14 September 2011

ISR 36.3

Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 36.3 (September 2011) has been published.
Steve Russ' article entitled 'The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences' is freely available and can be accessed here:

The table of contents is as follows:

1.
The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Mathematics in the Natural Sciences
Russ, Steve
209-213(5)

2.
The Vagueness of Wigner's Analysis
Gray, Jeremy
214-228(15)

3.
The Physical Origin of Physically Useful Mathematics
Lutzen, Jesper
229-243(15)

4.
Why the effectiveness of mathematics in the natural sciences is not surprising
Suppes, Patrick
244-254(11)

5.
Explaining the Applicability of Mathematics in Science
Baker, Alan
255-267(13)

6.
Reviews
Miller, Ian; Rehbein, Malte
268-272(5)