Dead Ends, Dejection, and Death: The Tunnel Vision of Seeking Absolute Truth

When I first read the exploratory assignment for this week, I was excited to see that we would be experimenting with a number of different digital tools. Having recently read about the Google Ngram viewer, I was particularly interested to experiment with this tool. However, much like Jenn describes in her post, I was troubled by the results I achieved through using this tool for this purpose (what purpose? I'm still not certain, and that's likely part of the problem). After creating my first graph for the five search terms, I felt both over- and underwhelmed. On the one hand, the sharp peaks and troughs of each line seemed significant, but on the other hand, I couldn’t determine what the lines were trying to tell me. Comparing each brightly colored line to the others felt like a good starting place to me, but then I realized that all I was seeing was the popularity of one term over another for a particular set of years. Could I interpret this data? I felt like I should be able to, but each time I tried to cross-reference the peak of one term in a particular year with the texts we read over the last two weeks, I found myself unable to see connections or draw conclusions. Attributing the spike in the usage of “language” to the work of Bacon seemed specious, at best. As much as I wanted to use the tool as a way of seeing the texts differently, I ultimately found myself unable to do so. Jason and Kyle’s presentation of the terms under the time span of a particular author definitely helped me to understand that organizing and presenting the data differently could have better facilitated my interpretations, although I still remain skeptical of being able to attribute peaks and troughs in usage to the work of one author, especially without any knowledge of the texts included in Google’s results.

Perhaps my grand expectations for the tool contributed to the sinking feeling I experienced as I tried to make sense of the results. At my lowest point, I questioned how this form of reading/interpretation could be useful in any context (I know—I’m quick to reach faulty conclusions in moments of great frustration), a position that I now retract after three other experiences: 1) the Digital Convergence conversation on database reading that Jenn mentioned in her post, 2) actually seeing what other groups were able to do with the tools, and 3) reading this article in which corpus analysis is used as a tool for interpreting the construct of writing underlying assessment rubrics (full disclosure: Dylan Dryer was my advisor, and I’m likely biased in thinking that this is amazing, ground-breaking research. But it’s amazing, ground-breaking research that you absolutely should read if you are at all interested in how theories of writing are actually influencing writing assessment). The lessons that I’m taking from this experience are that context really is everything (or, almost everything), and that when data doesn’t seem to show what you want it to show, perhaps you should rethink your approach—specifically the questions you’re bringing to the data, which might be forcing you into a kind of tunnel vision.

Returning to Vico, now, I have a greater appreciation for his discussion of chance, choice, and absolute truth:

When it comes to the matter of prudential behavior in life, it is well for us to keep in mind that human events are dominated by Chance and Choice, which are extremely subject to change and which are strongly influenced by simulation and dissimulation (both preeminently deceptive things). As a consequence, those whose only concern is abstract truth experience great difficulty in achieving their means, and greater difficulty in attaining their ends. Frustrated by their own plans, deceived by the plans of others, they often throw up the game. (871)

You may be thinking to yourself that this is obvious—of course human events are inflected, or even determined, by chance and choice, especially if you’re trained in the Humanities and spend most of your spare time reading texts devoted primarily to investigating, depicting, reimagining, questioning, and so on, the nature of human events (like (post) modernist novels!: À la Recherche du Temps Perdu, The Blue Flowers, To the Lighthouse, etc.). However, I think it’s worthwhile to step back and remind ourselves that sometimes the circumstances of events are “extraneous and trivial” or even “bad” and “contrary to one’s goal” (871). In other words, sometimes Ngram searches do not create transparent, usable data. Sometimes the choices that you make in pursuing one line of inquiry instead of another lead to dead ends (or, worse, dejection). But, where I think Vico is really helpful is in showing that a dead end is not a dead end is not a dead end:  If you are constrained by the pursuit of absolute truth, and if probability or areas of grayness make you uncomfortable, perhaps you should re-examine your epistemological views.

Which brings me to my final point:  Jenn introduced epistemology to this week’s conversation, and posed the question of “whether or not a shifting context can invalidate the knowledge created by an episteme and create the need for a new one.” My tentative answer to this question draws from a response that someone (Sarah?) recently attributed to Dr. Graban: perhaps shifting context doesn’t invalidate the knowledge created by an episteme, but rather it helps us to build on and away from that knowledge. If there’s one thread that we can trace throughout the strands we’ve discussed so far, it’s that we never replace, forget, or throw out existing knowledge; we’re always revisiting knowledge, beliefs, and values and interrogating those through the lens of later social and historical contexts. After all, we wouldn’t have the death of the author if the author herself had never been born.

Additional References:

Enoch, Jessica and Jean Bessette. “Meaningful Engagements: Feminist Historiography and the Digital Humanities.” College Composition and Communication 64.4 (2013): 634-660.

Dryer, Dylan. “Scaling Writing Ability: A Corpus Driven Inquiry.” Written Communication 30.1 (2013): 3-35. 

Proust, Marcel. In Search of Lost Time. Trans. C.K. Scott Moncrieff and Terence Kilmartin. Rev.D. J. Enright. New York: Modern Library, 2003.

Queneau, Raymond. The Blue Flowers. Trans. Barbara Wright. New York: New Directions, 1967. 

Woolf, Virginia. To The Lighthouse. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1955.