I read the article "In Praise of Pattern" by Stephen Ramsay.
Overall, I thought his argument of how digital humanities research has the potential to be much more ambiguous or open ended in terms its progression when compared to STEM research was very interesting. In our team-VanGogh's letters-to some extent, while doing research, I can understand Ramsay's experiences describing digital humanities work. Our project involves investigating the mental state of VanGogh through an analysis of his letters. While we do have a concrete research question, deciding what exactly to look for in each letter was definitely a challenge.
Because language pertaining to emotional states can be ambiguous at times, I felt that at times I was marking things based on my own judgement, and not necessarily be an objective measure, as one may do in STEM research. Ramsay seems to struggle with somewhat similar issues in his work at times. Specifically on pages 6 and 7 of the pdf, he admits to making a "guess", although an educated guess, on the scene changes of play Antony and Cleopatra, given how unclear scene divisions in this play were.
Furthermore, he admits to beginning he research on the works of Shakespeare without any concrete purpose in mind, instead just exploring the capabilities of technology in the humanities work. Though not necessarily in research, but in some of my humanities classes in general, I do feel like I take this more "open ended" approach of exploring the interesting portions of the text, when doing things such as writing an essay.
I read the article "In Praise of Pattern" by Stephen Ramsay.
Overall, I thought his argument of how digital humanities research has the potential to be much more ambiguous or open ended in terms its progression when compared to STEM research was very interesting. In our team-VanGogh's letters-to some extent, while doing research, I can understand Ramsay's experiences describing digital humanities work. Our project involves investigating the mental state of VanGogh through an analysis of his letters. While we do have a concrete research question, deciding what exactly to look for in each letter was definitely a challenge.
Because language pertaining to emotional states can be ambiguous at times, I felt that at times I was marking things based on my own judgement, and not necessarily be an objective measure, as one may do in STEM research. Ramsay seems to struggle with somewhat similar issues in his work at times. Specifically on pages 6 and 7 of the pdf, he admits to making a "guess", although an educated guess, on the scene changes of play Antony and Cleopatra, given how unclear scene divisions in this play were.
Furthermore, he admits to beginning he research on the works of Shakespeare without any concrete purpose in mind, instead just exploring the capabilities of technology in the humanities work. Though not necessarily in research, but in some of my humanities classes in general, I do feel like I take this more "open ended" approach of exploring the interesting portions of the text, when doing things such as writing an essay.