From orlandi Tue May 18 08:56:01 1999
Subject: sfogo
To: adamo (), gigliozz (giuseppe gigliozzi, ), moscati@iaei.rm.cnr.it,
bonincon (Ilaria Bonincontro), buzzetti@philo.unibo.it,
mordenti@uniroma2.it, manfred.thaller@hd.uib.no,
willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 08:56:01 +0100 (BST)
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Cari amici, vi invito a leggere il saggio di cui sotto:
> Date: Mon, 17 May 1999 22:54:35 +0100
> From: Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
> Subject: talk online
>
> Dear Colleagues:
>
> I offer for your amusement and/or interest the text of a talk I am about to
> give, "We would know how we know what we know: Responding to the
> computational transformation of the humanities", at
> http://ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/essays/know/. Comments welcome.
>
> Yours,
> WM
>
in cui troverete la maggior parte dei concetti che mi sono cari,
e che ho (potrei dire abbiamo) sviluppato in parecchi saggi, e
anche sono stati oggetto dei seminari dei Lincei, e di tante
nostre pubblicazioni, singole e collettive, oltre che di iniziative
a carattere prevalentemente metodologico.
Sia pure con scarsi fondamenti teorico-filosofici, ed arrivando
a conclusioni discutibili, troverete il riferimento alla
formalizzazione [un libro intero dei Lincei!], all'importanza
della filosofia della matematica d'inizio secolo
(cf. addirittura dispense iasu), l'operazione di codifica come
procedimento astratto altamente interpretativo; perfino la menzione
di unix come ambiente privilegiato...
E con tutto ciò, forse un solo piccolo accenno, diciamo, al
gruppo "romano" (inteso in senso lato)? Quello che più mi
dispiace -- e sia inteso che questo è un ultimo sfogo definitivo
e non vi scoccerò più con cose del genere -- è che sta
succedendo il solito fenomeno, per cui saranno accettate fra poco
nel nostro ambiente (italiano) cose predicate in Italia da anni,
solo perché vengono dal, diciamo, mondo anglosassone. O tempora
o mores [nel senso che è sempre stato così ;-) ].
Saluti!
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tito Orlandi orlandi@rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it
CISADU - Fac. di Lettere Tel. 39+6.4991-3936
P.zale Aldo Moro, 5 Fax 39+6.4991-3945
00185 Roma http://rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it/~orlandi
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 15:22:42 +0100
To: orlandi@rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it
From: Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
Subject: Re: sfogo
In-Reply-To: <9905180856.aa02844@rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it>
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Status: RO
Dear Tito:
I now finally have time after marking exams to reply in a straightforward
way rather than the unfortunately sarcastic thanks I sent you formerly, for
which I apologise.
All my effort in the area covered by this essay, and all my many notes to
Humanist on the subject have been aimed at getting discussion started or
restarted, circulated, considered. I really don't care who does the talking
or gets the credit as long as the field advances. I know from several
sources, including yours, that your interests and mine have been parallel
for many years, and for those years I have respected your work a great
deal. It is a failing of mine that the little Italian I have -- and I do
mean very little -- is simply not up to reading the productions of the
Academia Lincei. Unfortunately I think it highly likely that most of those
I know in the English speaking world who should be reading the relevant
publications in Italian are not either because they don't know about them
or cannot read them. This is our loss, and my loss in particular.
My brief for the MPG is to talk about my experiences. So I am. But, as you
have pointed out, we have to move beyond individual experiences. That's the
whole point of my community-building efforts through Humanist and through
other means too.
The problem we have is exacerbated by the very interdisciplinarity of the
field -- it can be very difficult to see the scholarly value of productions
in fields other than one's own. So you will forgive me, I hope, for
reserving judgment on exactly how benighted by little essay is. But I
certainly would welcome constructive criticisms and pointers, though I can
hardly expect you to take the time out for such remedial efforts.
Let us collaborate as we can.
Yours,
W
From mail.kcl.ac.uk!kcl.ac.uk!willard.mccarty Fri May 21 07:19:07 1999
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Date: Fri, 21 May 1999 06:31:23 +0100
To: orlandi@rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it
From: Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
Subject: Re: invitation
In-Reply-To: 9905191816.aa06743@rmcisadu.let.uniroma1.it
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Status: RO
Tito,
I have finally had a chance to do what I had already intended to do with my
poor essay -- change it in response to criticisms. Yours was the first, and
I can only hope others will be more forthcoming. All I have time for at the
moment is to put in what I hope is proper recognition -- a pointer to your
online essay in a couple of places, a clearer statement of how tentative I
regard the essay as being. Obviously I need to spend considerably more time
in digesting the implications of formalisation while at the same time
keeping my perspective on the field. Because of the nature of our field,
there are so many elaborations to take into account. My perhaps impossible
goal is to preserve the overview while deepening my own understanding of
each take on it.
Thanks again for your vigorous sfogo -- a new word for me, and one which I
have come to like.
Yours,
W
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 13, No. 27.
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: Fri, 21 May 1999 07:09:49 +0100
From: Willard McCarty willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
Subject: what we do all this for
Recently I put a talk of mine online, at
http://ilex.cc.kcl.ac.uk/wlm/essays/know/ -- yet another attempt to deal
with humanities computing and where it fits into our schemes of things.
Shortly thereafter I received an "outburst" from one of us,
vigorously objecting to my silence on important work along one of the lines
I follow there and to the obvious ignorance that resulted. I realised then
that the essay had been taken as intentionally definitive rather than as an
attempt to define and so to provoke commentary such as that very outburst.
There are several reasons, I suppose, why such misunderstandings happen.
The thing *looks* finished, for one -- I do try not to produce messy HTML,
but sometimes I would really like a rusticating function that would make it
visually obvious how tentative a document is. (Some people intentionally
make typos, then add corrections to the printed copy before circulating it;
alas, HTML does not allow for that sophistication.) For another thing, our
scholarship, I suppose, isn't conversational enough yet to allow for
deliberate provocation in quite that way. Then, too, there are always
cultural differences as well as differences of personal style.
I recall being in a face-to-face seminar once, on Milton, led by Northrop
Frye. At the first meeting it was clear to me that we students were all
frightened stiff by the presence of such a fellow and the prospect of
confronting him once a week for a whole year. I (as scared as anyone, I
suppose) remember sitting there and thinking, if I say anything at all, my
ignorance and foolishness will be immediately obvious, but if I say nothing
I won't learn much, so I'll talk anyway. So I asked him a question, can't
remember what. Then started a conversation that lasted the whole year, the
most powerful experience I've ever had in a classroom. I thought better,
faster, clearer than I had ever thought before; it was utterly exhilirating!
So, thanks to Reed College, where I first learned the value of mouthing off
among smart people, and to Northrop Frye, sine qua non, I make bold here to
tickle the tiger again and see if I cannot get a better or just different
roar than my own. To advance our field it seems to me that we need to fit
together all the wisdom we have, make something coherent out of the
aggregate. To do that, we need to have that wisdom to hand. My hope was AND
IS to coax it out into this open forum so that we can all take a look.
Please!
Yours,
WM
From orlandi Sat May 22 11:08:24 1999
Subject: sfogo etc.
To: willard.mccarty@kcl.ac.uk
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 11:08:24 +0100 (BST)
Cc: adamo (), gigliozz (giuseppe gigliozzi, ), moscati@iaei.rm.cnr.it,
bonincon (Ilaria Bonincontro), buzzetti@philo.unibo.it,
mordenti@uniroma2.it, manfred.thaller@hd.uib.no
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Dear Willard, I have put on line
http://RmCisadu.let.uniroma1.it/~orlandi/mccarty1.html
the promised explanation, together with the relevant
documents [follow the links]. I hope that you find it
interesting, and maybe worth of more discussion.
If you wish, and see it opportune, you may call the attention
of the readers of Humanist to the page.
Cordiali saluti, Tito
P.S. The date for my seminar may be in March or April.
Thank you.
Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 13, No. 30.
Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King's College London
Date: Sat, 22 May 1999 15:05:47 +0100
From: Willard McCarty
Subject: discussion of humanities computing
Dear Colleagues,
Professor Tito Orlandi (Roma, La Sapienza), author of the strenuous "sfogo"
(objection) to my little essay, "We would know how we know what we know",
has put together a Web page of explanations and pointers to his own work,
at http://RmCisadu.let.uniroma1.it/~orlandi/mccarty1.html, and given me
gracious permission to circulate news of it. I sincerely hope it stirs up
like passions in others, since further debate would at minimum indicate
that concern for our field as a whole is not the solitary bent of a very
few. It is good for us all that gadflies buzz about (whatever one may think
of the sound they make :-). I indicate in my essay, for whatever it may be
worth to anyone, how highly I regard the TEI, but -- no disrespect intended
-- its pursuit is only one aspect of humanities computing as a whole, and
if we want to get full benefit from the TEI we'll pay some attention to its
broader intellectual context(s). We're magnanimous, yes? Not too much of a
stretch, though if paying such attention were not a bit of stretch, it
surely would not be worth any of the noise made so far about it. And
there's joy in stretching and being stretched ;-)....
APOLOGIES to those who attempted to access the URL of my essay, at
, and were met at the gate by a
demand for userid and password. My server did this on his own after I
changed his administrator password, honest. I have fixed him, so there
should be no more demands of that kind.
Yours,
WM