Steaming down the sunlight

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Steaming down the sunlight
HSIS, Galway, 17/11/07

• Professor Willard McCarty
• Kings College London
• staff.cch.kcl.ac.uk/wmccarty/

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TOC

• A parable
• Computer science the humanities
• The humanities and method
• Athens and Jerusalem
• Analytic computing
• Synthetic computing
• Conclusion

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Odysseus katabasis, from Padraic Colum,
Adventures of Odysseus (1918) a photograph of a
brickie (1947)
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TOC

• A parable
• Computer science the humanities
• The humanities and method
• Athens and Jerusalem
• Analytic computing
• Synthetic computing
• Conclusion

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2006 dhcs2006.uchicago.edu/ 2007
dhcs.northwestern.edu/
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TOC

• A parable
• Computer science the humanities
• The humanities and method
• Athens and Jerusalem
• Analytic computing
• Synthetic computing
• Conclusion

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The specific problem that the humanities
present to thought is that one has not rightly
grasped their nature if one measures them by the
yardstick of a progressive knowledge of
regularity. Research in the humanities does
not endeavour to grasp the concrete phenomenon as
an instance of a universal rule. The individual
case does not serve only to confirm a law from
which practical predictions can be made. Its
ideal is rather to understand the phenomenon
itself in its unique and historical
concreteness.Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and
Method (2000/1960) 4f
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For the object of understanding human events is
to sense the alternativeness of human
possibility. Jerome Bruner, Possible Castles,
Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (1986)
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TOC

• A parable
• Computer science the humanities
• The humanities and method
• Athens and Jerusalem
• Analytic computing
• Synthetic computing
• Conclusion

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Quid ergo Athenis et Hiersolymis? Quintus
Septimus Florens Tertullianus (ca 155-230)
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TOC

• A parable
• Computer science the humanities
• The humanities and method
• Athens and Jerusalem
• Analytic computing
• Synthetic computing
• Conclusion

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Analytic modelling
simplify
experience
Symbolic system
Non-symbolic system
manipulate
compare
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Effectively computable representation
Narrative meaning
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TOC

• A parable
• Computer science the humanities
• The humanities and method
• Athens and Jerusalem
• Analytic computing
• Synthetic computing
• Conclusion

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Autopoiesis in art Drawing hands, M. C.
Escher (1948)
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TOC

• A parable
• Computer science the humanities
• The humanities and method
• Athens and Jerusalem
• Analytic computing
• Synthetic computing
• Conclusion

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Analogies
as A is to B, so C is to D
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Society?
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