Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 39, No. 400.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
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        Date: 2026-04-07 07:19:29+00:00
        From: Willard McCarty <willard.mccarty@mccarty.org.uk>
        Subject: some consequences

In response to Jerry McGann's note, this is what I see happening to my
research.

I begin with the following question: how might artificial intelligence
research be shaped so that it can help address fundamental perplexities
brought about by climate change? Or, one might say, how can it serve an
analogous role to the Pythia whose advice Croesus of Lydia did not heed;
or to Moathodi Dikgang, from whom Richard Werbner learned; or to the
shamans Caroline Humphrey studied; or to the Persian Falnamah? And so
on. How, in other words, can we get the good, very tough advice we need
out of our smart machine, and not the very clever drivel served to us by
these so-called Large Language Models?

Relevant materials open out in many directions, or rather dimensions. To
proceed effectively one needs, in my view, much help from many fields.
This means depending on solid, honest works of scholarship in those
fields. Northrop Frye once wrote (in On Education) that it doesn't
matter where you start as long as you start in a discipline that can
expand into these many others. What sort of research results? My view,
again, is a rather rare sort of 'interdisciplinary' activity, not the
'interdisciplinarity' that simply collects attractive bits from here and
there, rather one that seeks to undo, or at least expose to light,
whatever limiting assumptions disciplines make, and so uncover some
radically new questions.

I don't need to say how unemployable pursuing my course of action would 
make a freshly minted PhD, so there's a lot to do socially, institutionally, 
and these are not favourable times.

As far as being a 'humanist' is concerned, this online seminar seeks to
remake that term by providing an open door for discussion. There are
simply too many interesting and much needed sciences that 'humanist' is
usually taken to exclude not to feel rather claustrophobic when the term is
used. Yes, 'science' has the same problem, though its privileged status
masks its need for radical pluralisation.

Comments?

Best,
Willard
--
Willard McCarty,
Professor emeritus, King's College London;
Editor, Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts,
   Sciences and Humanities (Berghahn); Humanist
www.mccarty.org.uk


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