
How humanists are using computers to understand text - benbreen
http://tedunderwood.com/2015/06/04/seven-ways-humanists-are-using-computers-to-understand-text/
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musicaldope
Is the word 'humanist' used for people who study the humanities? I've only
ever heard it in the context of humanism. Not saying it's wrong, I'm genuinely
wondering

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benbreen
It's a relatively uncommon usage but yes, it can just mean people who work in
humanities fields. After all, the modern fields of history, literature, etc.
trace their genealogies directly back to Renaissance humanism so it makes
sense. Sometimes it's used in a self-aware way to refer to both at the same
time, as in this profile of Anthony Grafton of Princeton, so far as I know the
sole contemporary owner of a Renaissance book wheel:

[http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW06-07/11-0404/fe...](http://www.princeton.edu/paw/archive_new/PAW06-07/11-0404/features_grafton.html)

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marcus_holmes
Is it just me or does this writing style, common to academics in social
sciences, make things almost impossibly hard to read?

I get about halfway through the paragraph before losing the will to read any
more. I understand all the words but they don't seem to fit into patterns that
make sense.

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whatshisface
This is just a wild shot in the dark, but maybe those in the humanities are
abnormally good at reading?

Like, if a lit major said the math in a CS paper was hard to follow nobody
would bat an eye.

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paulsutter
> One of the main ways computers are changing the textual humanities is by
> mediating new connections to social science

How good do you need to be at reading to make sense of sentences like this?

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trentmb
It's a bit purple, but not unintelligible.

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_delirium
It also seems pretty easy to read to me (I'm a CS researcher). The only oddity
I can find in the sentence is that "mediating" in this usage, meaning "serving
as an intermediary", is a little jargonish. It's one of the standard
dictionary definitions of the word, but using it in this way is more common in
certain areas of academic writing, and it develops a bit different shade of
meaning as a result. You could compare how the startup world uses "disrupt" in
a more frequent and slightly jargonish manner compared to standard English.

