Knowledge Engineering or Digital Humanities?

Abstract

Compared to Classical information Systems, Knowledge-Based Systems are much more dependent on paradigm shifts (Kuhn 1983) that shape their fields of application. Fields of application modify the types of data integrated into the information system, but also relations between data and thus the structure and shape of the databases. More radically these fields may need a representation inconsistent or less compatible with the usual computerized centralized representations of knowledge. When an intervention in the field of culture and the Humanities-literature, history, geography, philosophy, politics, theology, music, visual and graphic art-is at stake, it now seems (Meunier 2012) that digitalization and computation have an impact on the humanities, that culture impacts Computer Science, with the computational field opening onto the cultural, and the humanities opening onto the computational field. This is what can be called the modern-day notion of digital humanities, which more and more researchers and application designers are considering, especially when they work on e-Learning or Serious Games. At least two modes of knowledge representation confront each otherthat of knowledge transmission on the one hand and that usually linked to digital knowledge representation on the other hand. This phenomenon sheds light on the strategic position of the Chinese Academy of Science, unveiled by one of its prominent members (Wang 2009) when he states: "Although the answers to the computational dimensions of culture are not clear, we must foresee them because we simply cannot afford not to see their consequences [….] I am hopeful and optimistic, and believe this could be the beginning of a new area in computing that would seamlessly integrate information technology with social sciences in a connected world." Researchers David Radouin and Stéphane Vandamme pointed this out not long ago, at a seminar 2 on the humanities: "From the 19th century, we have inherited a clear cut separation between the Humanities and Sciences, corresponding to a growing specialization and disciplining. The modern-day university system was built on this disciplinary base, while at the same time calling for its trespassing, for the sake of educating complete individuals. How to think such a project today? […] Do we have to acknowledge the difference between the two different cultures, while trying not to break their unityas, precisely, forms of cultures-for all that? Is it a matter of reinventing a dialogue between two distinct entities or of questioning the nature of this distinctiveness? Can we, do we have to reactivate ancient forms of connection, or on the contrary, acknowledge a profound evolution in the two terms