Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 14, No. 417.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
<http://www.princeton.edu/~mccarty/humanist/>
<http://www.kcl.ac.uk/humanities/cch/humanist/>
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2000 20:10:02 +0100
From: "Osher Doctorow" <osher@ix.netcom.com>
Subject: Backward-downward hypnotic search with a little night
music (BDHSLNM)
I have an idea. Hypnotize a humanist A and a mathematician or theoretical
physicist B. Tell the humanist that he will learn quantitative thinking
almost instantly and tell B that he will learn the humanities almost
instantly. Turn them loose in the library. A will go to B's section and
start at the top - the most difficult mathematics/physics in the library. B
will do likewise with A's humanities. They will discovery shortly that they
do not know everything almost instantly, so they will back up a tiny step
and study the next backward step which leads to or implies the most
difficult step (e.g., the previous theorem or page or theory). Continuing
this way, A will learn maths or physics backwards completely, B will learn
humanities completely, but of course both learn them by a reverse process.
Neither A nor B need go all the way backwards - have them stop when they
seem to make sense and report that they understand what they are doing. My
question is then, why cannot we use the above idea with humanities and/or
quantitative computers. "Tell them" that they know everything about one or
both fields, instruct them to back up one small step if they do not
understand the most difficult questions which we pose (the method of backing
up being analogous to the above). Not only will they learn and isolate
methodological primitives (if we do it right), but they will bridge the gap
between humanities and science/mathematics and computers. Right or wrong?
(Notice that we have not contradicted Socrates, since the computers are
essentially defining and learning backwards.)
Osher
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