Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 37, No. 226.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2023-09-26 07:08:47+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: words and implications

The recent death of Evelyn Fox Keller took from us a mind that cut
through whatever standard account was in her field of vision, bringing 
up questions which don't go away, which repel jargon. So, as a friend
recently said, that mind was always worth 100% attention. For decades 
her dominant focus was on biology, but as one look at her Making Sense 
of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and 
Machines (Harvard, 2002) will reveal, this goes very far indeed, even to 
the digital humanities. She, like many of us, I suspect, was an outsider, 
and paid for that, but being on the outside gave her the powerful 
detachment from standard accounts that I celebrate. See her last book, 
Making Sense of My Life in Science: A Memoir (Modern Memoirs, 2023) 
for the story.

Of course standard accounts are useful, but at the same time they narrow
down the scope of our thinking--and worse than that, they remove
uncertainties and qualifications. 

This morning I came across an example of a word which exemplifies the 
problem, 'global'. Back in 1969 pioneer computer scientist George Forsythe, 
in "Computer Science and Education", wrote that, "the question 'What can 
be automated?' is one of the most inspiring philosophical and practical 
questions of contemporary civilization." (p. 1025) A bit overblown to my 
liking, but he put his finger on an important point, that the digital machine 
was (and is) unlimited in its application. What he omitted was the qualification, 
'within the constraints of its design'. What it affords, then, is a 'global'
perspective--a perspective on everything everywhere but from a singular
standpoint. It is, then, what I'd call 'panoptic'. Here's the OED to our
rescue:

panoptic
1. All-seeing.
2. In which all is seen: cf. PANOPTICON.

panopticon
1. a. The name given by [Jeremy] Bentham to a proposed form of prison of
circular shape having cells built round and fully exposed towards a
central ‘well’, whence the warders could at all times observe the prisoners.

As some here will know Michel Foucault made much of Bentham's design. I
don't want to make too much of it here, only to sensitise ourselves to the
dangers of a singular, 'global' perspective in the absence of genuine dialogue
with others standing in other places, with other views on the world, “on the 
edge of things in a great ring of viewers”, as Greg Dening once wrote . 
Outsiders all, rather than cheerleaders.

What does all this have to do with digital humanities, technically,
intellectually, socially?

Comments?

Yours,
WM
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Science Reviews;  Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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