A Digital Ivory Tower

This blog shall document and offer for discussion the progress of a personal research project on the epistemic properties of the kind of information the Humanities – and their historical branches in particular – use, and the requirements for information technology, information science and Computer Science these properties imply. It takes its name from the intention to completely ignore all considerations related to current research politics, fashions and funding.

OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Manfred Thaller (March 29, 2018). A Digital Ivory Tower. A Digital Ivory Tower. Retrieved January 18, 2025 from https://ivorytower.hypotheses.org/1

The game of the image

Clio‘s attributes are papyrus and stylus, not the violin.
Well … some people in antiquity did show her with a Lyra; a Lyra still is not a violin, however.
Somebody in fifteenth century’s Einbeck did show her with a violin. This is wrong for a learned humanist; but it was his/her statement and inheritance.
To understand the fifteenth century we have therefore to represent what is there, even if we know it to be wrong.
Sources may be commented, but never “corrected”.
We need systems to handle information, which is just as
wrong, inconsistent, contradictory and vague, as the
historical sources are.

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