Abstract
Digital Humanities (hereafter DH) is a research field engaged in exploring how humanities scholarship is transformed and extended by the digital and vice versa. The core practice of DH research is modelling which implies the translation of complex systems of knowledge into computationally processable models. In our work we contextualise DH practices within a semiotic framework; namely we consider modelling as a strategy to make sense (signification) via practical thinking (creation and manipulation of models). A semiotic approach of this kind contributes to stress the dynamic nature of models and modelling, and to reinstate in renewed terms the understanding of modelling as open process of signification enacting a triadic cooperation (among object, representamen and interpretant). Referring to Peirce classification of hypoicons, we reflect on some DH examples of modelling in the form of images, diagrams and metaphors, claiming that a semiotic understanding of modelling could ultimately allow us to surpass the duality object versus model (as well as sign vs. context). We thus propose to consider modelling as a creative and highly pragmatic process of thinking and reasoning in which metaphors assume a central role and where meaning is negotiated through the creation and manipulation of external representations combined with an imaginative use of formal and informal languages.
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Notes
- 1.
The work for this essay was conducted as part of the research project Modelling between digital and humanities: thinking in practice (http://www.modellingdh.eu). Project partners: Arianna Ciula, University of Roehampton (until January 2017) and King’s Digital Lab (King’s College London, from February 2017); Øyvind Eide, University of Cologne; Cristina Marras, Institute for European Intellectual Lexicon and History of Ideas, National Research Council (Rome); Patrick Sahle, University of Cologne. The project is funded from April 2016 to July 2018 under the Volkswagen Stiftung programme: “Original—isn’t it?” New Options for the Humanities and Cultural Studies, Funding Line 2 “Constellations” (2016–2017).
- 2.
The following discussion on terminology benefited from the research conducted by Michela Tardella within the project Modelling between digital and humanities: thinking in practice.
- 3.
Jerome McGann has articulated this framework extensively over the years and made it relevant also to a DH research context; see his recent book (McGann 2014).
- 4.
This is of course based on a wide definition of what the objects of study for the humanities at large are:
The humanities study the meaning-making practices of human culture, past and present, focusing on interpretation and critical evaluation, primarily in terms of the individual response and with an ineliminable element of subjectivity (Small 2013: 57).
- 5.
For an in depth discussion of the role of formal models and stories in economics see Morgan and Knuuttila (2012).
- 6.
For a discussion on the presence of metaphors in DH complemented by some examples related to research projects see Ciula and Marras (2016).
- 7.
The point of departure for the discussion on scientific models as metaphors in contemporary literature can be traced back to Max Black’s interaction view of metaphor (1962) and Mary Hesse’s seminal work Models and Analogies in Science (1966). For a discussion on metaphor and thought see the contributions collected in Ortony (ed.) (1993).
- 8.
See how metaphorical mapping is modelled in the Conceptual Integration Network (CIN), developed by Fauconnier and Turner (1998); a brief but clear discussion of the two perspectives, that of Lakoff and Johnson and that of Fauconnier and Turner is available here: http://markturner.org/blendaphor.html (accessed 29 June 2017).
- 9.
For a detailed discussion on the digital model by its main developer, John Bradley, and access to the associated semantic web ontology, see http://factoid-dighum.kcl.ac.uk/ (accessed 29 June 2017)
- 10.
This is also the suggestion made by the physicist Giorgio Careri in his contribution to an interesting and multidisciplinary discussion on the role of models in thought and knowledge (A.A.V.V. 1999: 185).
- 11.
However other questions remain open: are there other productive semiotic concepts to include in this discussion? How to unpack the relation between modelling versus inscriptions, signs versus representations?
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Ciula, A., Marras, C. (2019). Exploring a Semiotic Conceptualisation of Modelling in Digital Humanities Practices. In: Olteanu, A., Stables, A., Borţun, D. (eds) Meanings & Co.. Numanities - Arts and Humanities in Progress, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91986-7_3
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