The spectrum of humanistic thought, like that of scientific investigation, encompasses the gamut of beliefs regarding the nature of knowledge, the world, and the human ability to establish understanding with varying degrees of certainty.
Burdick et al. “One: From Humanities to Digital Humanities,” in Digital_Humanities (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2012), 4.
As someone who intends on pursuing a major in the hard sciences (geology), but who also enjoys engaging with the humanities, this quote resonated with me. It encapsulates the blend between these two disciplines, describing how both use similar methods to “establish understanding” about the world and knowledge itself. I think that the phrase “establish understanding” is particularly important, because it implies that it is not just the specialists doing the primary research who are aiming to understand it for themselves, but that there’s a second step in which understanding is established in a broader community. I think that digital humanities projects are vessels for establishing understanding on a broader scale; through maps, data visualization, exhibits, and more, information is digested and presented for broader consumption.
The biggest connection between Digital Humanities and my current interests is mapping. I love the idea of visualizing data about the environment on maps, and I also am intrigued by how humans interact and have interacted with the natural world over time. I come from a family of mapmakers and geography majors, so this interest may have been engrained in me from a young age, but nonetheless I’d love to continue exploring it. Realistically, this may be one of my biggest takeaways from taking a Digital Arts and Humanities class: applying the tools I learn to my own interests and endeavors, which may or may not fall strictly within the arts and humanities. I also think that an important aspect of this class is publishing our work on the web and becoming comfortable with the world of digital scholarship. Currently, I don’t have any GIS experience but it’s something that I’m very eager to learn, and I hope to get started with it in this class, and I’m also eager to learn about other DH data methods that can be applied more broadly, like making data visualizations.