Evidence, Coincidence, and Superabundant Information

Lee, Maurice S.

doi:10.2979/victorianstudies.54.1.87

Cited by 20 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Levine argues that the Victorian “novel could be read as offering a critique of the mastery implied by statistical knowledge” by evoking the “enormity effect,” that is, the overwhelming and humbling sense, not of exact numbers, but that there are “too many to know, to represent, to grasp” (, p. 70). Maurice Lee () draws a parallel between the “vastness of nineteenth‐century print culture” and our contemporary access to digitized versions through “data mining of unprecedented efficiency, specificity, and scope” (p. 88). Lee explores the reactions of Dickens and Poe to “random superabundance” of information (p. 90).…”

Section: The Statistical Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Often, the claims we as literary scholars make are about larger systems and patterns (of racism, for example), yet as Houston points out, these “broad arguments [tend to be] based on a limited number of specific examples” (, p. 498). Similarly, Lee () calls into question the widespread deployment among literary scholars of the “anecdotal logic” of New Historicism, by which “any single cultural artifact can be a basis for interpretation,” with no need for demonstrating sources of influence or authorial intention (p. 88). Jockers argues “The literary scholar of the twenty‐first century can no longer be content with anecdotal evidence, with random ‘things’ gathered from a few, even ‘representative’ texts.…”

Section: Taking Root: Dh and Victorian Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Victorian roots and branches: “The statistical century” as foundation to the digital humanities

Babb

2018

Literature Compass

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Victorian Studies and the Digital Humanities (DH) are a natural fit; Victorian texts are in the public domain and thus available for full digitization and subjection to all kinds of applications. This essay focuses on arguably the most controversial: the use of statistical methodologies to analyze literary texts. Often aimed at the “distant reading” practices of Franco Moretti, the pros and cons of these methods have been widely debated among literary scholars, but with little reference to their historical roots. Historical accounts of DH have instead focused on technological developments, citing the massive, computerized concordance of the works of Thomas Aquinas, envisioned in 1949 by Father Roberto Busa and realized by IBM over the next 20 years, as the moment DH was born. Such accounts, as useful as they are, neglect important connections between the computational methodologies of DH and the emergence of modern statistical methodology during the nineteenth century. The advantage of seeing DH as part of the history of statistics is that it helps us understand and evaluate statistically based DH methodologies in their own terms and not simply as methodologies associated with particular neoliberal institutions in the present. This essay argues that understanding the history of statistics as well as examining current practice helps address the criticisms leveled at computational methodologies and the question of compatibility with traditional humanistic methodologies such as close reading. It begins with a brief history of the emergence of modern statistics in the nineteenth century and the impact on Victorian literature and popular culture and then examines recent DH scholarship that utilizes statistical methodologies to analyze Victorian texts.

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Section: The Statistical Centurymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Taking Root: Dh and Victorian Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Victorian roots and branches: “The statistical century” as foundation to the digital humanities

Babb

2018

Literature Compass

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Digital studies

Chapman

2015

The Encyclopedia of Victorian Literature

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The definition of digital Victorian studies is described in terms of scholarly projects that develop and employ digital methodologies and tools to remediate Victorian artifacts (including, but not only, the literary); the metacritical study of the relationship of the digital revolution to Victorian culture, involving a new focus on Victorian technology and print culture as systems of information, and often connected with media studies; and the employment of new digital approaches to interrogate Victorian texts, often based wholly or partly on quantitative research that responds to Franco Moretti's call for distant reading. The impact of the digital humanities on digital Victorian studies is mapped out, and the current major Victorian digital projects are introduced. In conclusion, there is an outline of the major changes in the conception of the book and of reading in response to advances in digital scholarship.

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Confirmation bias studies: towards a scientific theory in the humanities

Rist

2023

SN Soc Sci

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This article argues that a global crisis of interpretation can and should be confronted by humanities programmes in UK and similar universities. It contends that raising the standards of proof for theoretical models of interpretation in the humanities will help reverse erosions of trust undermining democratic institutions and expertise. To this end, it considers how financial challenges facing UK universities mould the teaching of theory in the humanities and the knowledge this teaching gives rise to. The article considers how standards of proof from the social sciences can interrogate theory in these conditions, developing it and increasing its assurance. The essay illustrates this claim through a series of sample theories and literary works: Roland Barthes’ ‘Death of the Author’, the Orientalism derived of Edward Said, Chinua Achebe’s novel Things Fall Apart and Jung Chang’s Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China. From these examples the essay draws larger conclusions, the biggest of which is a new subfield of study for the humanities: Confirmation Bias Studies. The article is structured as follows. In ‘Part 1: Introduction’, the article considers the openness of literary theory to confirmation bias, which is considered historically, in cognitive processes, especially those processes in the age of the internet, and in educational processes in the humanities. In ‘Part 2: Procedure’, the article explores the challenges of applying a confirmation bias approach to literary theory as a means of interpretation. In ‘Part 3: Conclusion’, the article summarises the key strategies for overcoming confirmation bias in theoretical approaches to the humanities discovered in the article.

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Evidence, Coincidence, and Superabundant Information

Cited by 20 publications

References 3 publications

Victorian roots and branches: “The statistical century” as foundation to the digital humanities

Victorian roots and branches: “The statistical century” as foundation to the digital humanities

Digital studies

Confirmation bias studies: towards a scientific theory in the humanities

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