1.1 From Digital Humanities to Speculative Computing - UCLA ...

cultural authority of computational methods in their received form only came after a
period of infatuation with the power of digital technology and the mythic ideal of
mathesis (a formal approach to knowledge representation) it seemed to embody. That
period of infatuation (a replay of a long tradition) fostered the idea that formal logic
might be able to represent human thought as a set of primitives and principles, and that
digital representation might be the key to unlocking its mysteries. Quaintly naïve as this
may appear in some circles, the ideal of a fully managed world governed by logical
procedures is an ongoing utopian dream for many who believe rationality provides an
absolute, not a relative, basis for knowledge, judgment, or action. iv The linguistic turn in
philosophy in the early decades of the 20 th century was fostered in part by the
development of formalist approaches that aspired to the reconciliation of natural and
mathematical languages. v The intellectual premises of British analytic philosophy and
those of the Vienna Circle, for instance, were not anomalies, but mainstream
contributions to a tradition of mathesis that continued to find champions in structural
linguistics and its legacy throughout the 20 th century. vi The popular culture image of the
brain as a type of computer turns these analogies between thought and processing into
familiar clichés. Casual reference to nerve synapses as logic gates or behaviors as
programs promote an unexamined but readily consumed idea whose ideal is a total
analysis of the human thought processes so as if they can be ordered according to formal
logic. vii Science fiction writers have exploited these ideas endlessly, as have futurologists
and pundits given to hyperbolic exaggeration, but the receptivity to their ideas shows how
deeply rooted the mythology of mathesis is in the culture at large. viii
1.1 History / 3/2008 /
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