Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 189.
Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
[1] From: Öyvind Eide <oeide@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.181: theory and fashionable dogma (172)
[2] From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.187: before Theory (79)
--[1]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2025-10-26 17:22:26+00:00
From: Öyvind Eide <oeide@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.181: theory and fashionable dogma
Dear Manfred,
to your moved part, about mobile phones in SF: the best reference I have seen is
Lillebror (Little Brother); the concept is a pun on Orwell's 1984. It was
introduced in the short story Kodémus by Tor Age Bringsværd in 1968 (Bringsværd,
T. Å. (1968). Probok. Gyldendal Norsk Forlag).
A short quote:
”2) Kodémus har alltid Lillebror med seg. Lillebror vet alt. Mye bedre enn
Kodémus. Når Kodémus er i tvil om noe, spør han Lillebror. Alle har lillebrødre.
Det er påbudt.”
2) Kodémus always brings Little Brother. Little Brother knows everything. Much
better than Kodémus. When Kodémus is in doubt, he asks Little Brother. Everybody
has small brothers. It is compulsory.
https://ndla.no/r/norsk-pb/kodemus/f56f027985
All the best,
Øyvind
> Am 24.10.2025 um 07:50 schrieb Humanist <humanist@dhhumanist.org>:
>
>
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 181.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2025-10-23 13:55:30+00:00
> From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.179: theory and fashionable dogma
>
> Dear Willard,
>
> thanks very much for the pointer to 'Mandarin Modernism: “Photography
> Until Now”'. Given my own obsessions, a paper where the sentence
> summarizing the critique (second from last) is: "... the task of
> thinking about the medium in historical terms is perpetually deferred
> ...", implying that thinking about media outside their historical frame
> is pointless, cannot meet anything but unadulterated enthusiasm! And the
> observation / criticism, that before 1945 for Szarkowskievery kind of
> photograph is art, while after 1945 - that is, within the context which
> for him is contemporary, aka understood - only a small slice of
> photographs are accepted as "art" is brilliant. I am also enthusiastic
> about the new topic of your post: "theory AND fashionable dogma" somehow
> indicating, at least for me, that the border line between a theory and
> "fashionable dogma" is quite fleeting. If a discipline is guided by a
> universally accepted, understood and explicitly formulated theory, you
> never need to justify its implicit use; if the tenor of your writing
> rhymes with what everyone else writes, you do not justify it either.
>
> Nevertheless, the two cases are not <emph>quite</emph> the same. Forgive
> my enthusiasm for what you may consider side issues. Back to your main
> point.
>
>> 'theory without experience'. ... [regarding] "any activity for which use of a
> tool is essential"
>
> Let me rephrase the question (and contradict me, please, if I have
> misunderstood): Can you theorize about the results of the application of
> a tool, without being able to wield the tool yourself? Let me take one
> step back and ease it first to: Can you appreciate the results of the
> application of a tool, without being able to wield the tool yourself?
>
> Yes. Everybody does, when being confronted with an artistic utterance.
> This is not the same as: Can you appreciate the quality of the results
> of the application of a tool, without being able to wield the tool
> yourself? This, too, is possible for everybody as long as you translate
> "quality" as "conformance to a specific value set". (Whether such a
> value set is a "theory" or a "fashionable dogma" at this stage seems to
> me to be immaterial.) If you translate "quality" as "maximum
> exploitation of the possibilities of a tool" or "difficulty of achieving
> the observable result" it seems to me to be doubtful. Not strictly
> impossible; but I believe the expertise obtained by passively observing
> the possibilities of a tool without wielding it yourself will in most
> cases be more costly (measured in the time needed to acquire) than
> getting a basic experience of handling the tool. If you rephrase the
> question slightly further, towards: Can you appreciate the potential of
> the application of a tool, without being able to wield the tool
> yourself? Well - I doubt it.
>
> I am deeply convinced that the intellectual scope of Ted Nelson's model
> of interconnected data / information is incomparably superior to
> Berners-Lee's. Xanadu became a joke. The WWW lives. Berners-Lee was able
> to code. Ted Nelson was not.
>
> This may seem to some muddling "theories" and "applications". The
> original problem was, though:
>
> Can you theorize about the results of the application of a tool, without
> being able to wield the tool yourself? So my thesis, mirroring the
> Xanadu-WWW paragraph: A theory of the application of a tool, which is
> not understood, will always run heads on into the stonewall of reality.
> A theory of the application of a tool, which is understood, works.
>
> Sometimes.
>
> Kind regards, Manfred
>
> PS: The following two paragraphs stood originally in front of the Nelson
> vs. Berners-Lee comparison. I was afraid, the might keep some people
> from reading the more serious following argument as being to flippant.
> Some other people might enjoy. So:
>
> At some stage in the lensmen series of E.E."Doc" Smith, one of the most
> prolific space opera SF authors of the forties, it becomes necessary
> that humanity finds the twenty most intelligent people in the galaxy.
> The solution is obvious: A small army of clerks feeds a few trillion
> punched cards through card sorting machines. (How exactly Smith's
> engineers, given that level of technology, needed only twenty minutes to
> analyze a "ray" sufficiently completely, to develop a "counterray" in
> the middle of a space battle, always did beat me.)
>
> The number of references to mobile phones in SF, before their invention,
> is quite small. The closest prediction of reality I remember is a scene,
> where the hero, a slightly confused professor, forgets to mute his
> communication device and it goes of during a pianissimo passage of a
> classic concert. (Sorry, cant remember the reference.)
>
>
> Am 23.10.25 um 08:57 schrieb Humanist:
>> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 179.
>> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>> Hosted by DH-Cologne
>> www.dhhumanist.org
>> Submit to:humanist@dhhumanist.org
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> Date: 2025-10-23 06:48:10+00:00
>> From: Willard McCarty<willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
>> Subject: theory and fashionable dogma
>>
>> My thanks to Manfred for spotting the absurdity of an unqualified
>> dismissal of 'theory without experience'. I did attempt to qualify mine by
>> saying that it concerned "any activity for which use of a tool is
>> essential". The case I had in mind but omitted mentioning was that of
>> Solomon-Godeau's 1990 attack on curator John Szarkowski's work as
>> Director of Photography at the Museum of Modern Art (see 'Mandarin
>> Modernism: “Photography Until Now”', Art in America 78). Szarkowski's
>> project struck home for me because I've been wanting closely tool-based
>> instruction in an art I love with all amateurish enthusiasm, and because I
>> am convinced we all badly need the same in practicing the art of computing in
>> the humanities.
>>
>> Beware, I say, of being blown off course by the strong winds of
>> theorising that are so easy to surrender to, so difficult to navigate
>> productively!
>>
>> Comments more than welcome.
>>
>> Yours,
>> WM
>> --
>> Willard McCarty,
>> Professor emeritus, King's College London;
>> Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
>> Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
>> www.mccarty.org.uk
>
> --
> Prof.em.Dr. Manfred Thaller
> formerly University at Cologne /
> zuletzt Universität zu Köln
--[2]------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 2025-10-26 10:16:13+00:00
From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.187: before Theory
Dear Jan,
indeed!
Well.
In my very first computer course, an introduction into SPSS, 1976, the
instructor told us, that there existed an overwhelmingly strong and
significant positive correlation between the population of storks and
the birthrate in the Eastern parts of Germany in the 1920ies and
1930ies. (Unfortunately I have never been able, to find proof of that
statement.)
This was an attempt to protect us from the fallacy to create a
correlation matrix between all variables in a dataset and then interpret
the strong correlations. Or more abstractly: Statistical relationships
as expressed by Pearson and Co. can <emph>prove</emph> - or be part of a
proof - of a hypothesized causal relationship. They can PROVE a
relationship; they cannot discover it.
(The can be instructive, nevertheless: indeed the drop in the number of
storks and the drop in human births are effects of the same process:
rural modernization, which results in drying up wet areas feeding
storks, as well as promoting contraception, medically as well as
mentality-wise.)
This is of course part of the background methodological grounding of
analytic statistics (regression, correlation ...), not of the
structure-finding branch (cluster analysis, ...). Somehow I nevertheless
feel very unhappy, if somebody proudly presents a cluster result without
any pre-analytical idea, why these clusters might appear.
So I very much share your skepticism about "theories" which somebody
formulates without a background in experience / data. On the other hand,
pure empiricism without a conceptual / theoretical framework is to me
not all that more palatable.
I leave it to Jim, to define the precise relationships between the sets
of hypotheses implied here, and a proper theory as an envelope for them :=)
Nice start of the week,
Manfred
Am 26.10.25 um 10:06 schrieb Humanist:
> Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 187.
> Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
> Hosted by DH-Cologne
> www.dhhumanist.org
> Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
> Date: 2025-10-26 07:54:49+00:00
> From: Jan Rybicki <jkrybicki@gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [Humanist] 39.185: theory and fashionable dogma
>
> It's interesting how, when we were all very young, "theory" entered humanists'
> professional dictionary and very quickly it was much less cool to engage in
the
> practice, or experimentation (depending which antonym of theory one prefers),
of
> reading and interpreting. In the immortal words of David Lodge put into the
> mouth of one of his favorite characters:
>
> “Theory?” Philip Swallow’s ears quivered under their silvery thatch, a few
> places further up the table. “That word brings out the Goering in me. When I
> hear it I reach for my revolver.”
>
> Those were the days...!
> Nostalgically,
> Jan
>
>
> Wysłano z programu Outlook dla systemu Android<https://aka.ms/AAb9ysg>
--
Prof.em.Dr. Manfred Thaller
formerly University at Cologne /
zuletzt Universität zu Köln
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