The new philology: An old discipline or a new science?

Abstract

Are the computers in our research computing centers today new tools with which we can economically pursue some of our traditional goals in the humanities? Or are we, as Dr. Mesthene has suggested, simply seduced by the other man's fine tools? I would like to argue that we must begin envisioning new goals and new ways of reaching old goals, that we must work in cooperation with the new technology to develop the tools and systems which promote our particular fields of inquiry. The challenge thrown to us in our computing centers today is "Are we willing and able to create a new marriage between goals of human understanding which we conceive and a technology which we and others develop?" In 1964 Ephim Fogel, opening a conference on Literary Data Processing, discussed a Vision-Actuality-Interval (VAI),which he described as variable, because "it depends on the research staff and facilities available, on the investigator's ingenuity and staying power, and on serendipity."' He assumed that in the next five years facilities would improve, investigators would have staying power, and there would be serendipity. Today, if the VAI seems less, it is because our vision has become blurred and discouraged. They are for most of us years of frustration or of projects which have brought little acclaim, and I am not speaking of lessons learned or disciplines evolved in these five years. Yet Dr. Mesthene has assured us that the role of the humanist is to explore possibilities, to establish values, and to elaborate an ideal vision. We also had quoted to us Mort Sahl's rejoinder to the VAI, that "the Future Lies Ahead." It is appropriate not to lament the VAI but to envision the FLA factor. Can we envision goals in the study of literature which may be approached by techniques and tools developed for us? In 1969 any report on the progress of computational analysis in literary studies must be far from positive. There is a growing disillusion with the computer both as a vehicle of new approaches to literary texts and as a superior card-indexing system for traditional literary scholarship. No doubt we are partly the victims of oversell by our IBM salesmen and computer directors, who promised us the computer would do things it is quite unsuited for. But our reaction against the computer can also be traced to more serious causes. Undoubtedly the biggest single handicap is our slow and inaccurate