APPENDIX A: The Empirical Dimension
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| The reflection of the sun in the canal Singel from the golden weathercock atop one of the towers of Amsterdam's gothic church De Krijtberg (meaning Chalk Mountain) - official name Franciscus Xaveriuskerk. |
To counter possible multiple misunderstandings and misconceptions about digital humanities set into intellectual space by the Times pieces, (op.cit.) a more precise picture of this field is necessary. Prof. Fish has not contributed to clarity here. To begin, it is not a cult, application for entry happens through normal channels at human services of most universities. To get clarity, we must differentiate the methods of humanities proper, from humanities digital.
Prof. Fish has given us one egregious example of humanities proper by sharing his insight that the weak syllable divide "op po in the word "opposite," a chiasmic structure, indicates sameness, or more precisely is used by John Milton to indicated a paradoxical, insidious sameness of combatants in the English religous wars of the 17th century. Hang on for a few more pages and I will go through this argumaent again, or go back to "Blog3" for the introduction.
The professor has not shared an example of digital humanities, I am going to do this after some more wind-up; he has left this unmistakable characterization or indictment: they can't or won't read, they let the computers do their work and their work is limited by the computer.
In a very general logical sense there is some truth there. The computers are not idle, hence they work, and they only work when programmed specifically within their capabilities. So forget them mopping the floor.
On a serious note, computers are also limited by the perspective and skill of the programmer or better by the skill of the team of content specialist and process specialists. As an open ended data processing system, the computer depends on considerable human work of identifying questions or problems for consideration, followed by considerable work identifying strategies for creating processes that can be iterated, followed by identifying the cases that can be tested and extracted from the data, followed by the arrangement of the data and the planning for the formatting of the output for subsequent study by humans.
Then there are "content specialists"; therein lies the secret of computing. Computers work outside their field. They were designed to do that. It is never about the computer, it is about the virtual memory space, it is about data structures of unimaginable vastness and complexity, it is about algorithmic processes and housekeeping that can keep all this consistent and repeatable electronic activity going and allows the creation of output that can actually be understood by humans who can devise solutions to complex problems or understand hidden structures.
Of course all this is available from wiki to highschoolers. Prof. Fish seems to be pleading for an exemption for humanities proper. Or he seems to plead for special privileges for human thought written in one century and read several centuries later, the information path: pen - paper - eye, with a brain on either end, a multi centurial chiasmus, brain to brain. On can indulge in some romantic fantasy here about intuiting the communications of the past. Yet if the brain waves are studied in cognitive science (by means of computers), we can study the texts that generate brainwaves, we might also be able to study the patterns of words that generate the brainwaves. Google has collected a text-base of close to 15 million texts, we should let the computers at them.
I plan to operate on a small scale here. The understanding is that these studies will be done quietly so as not to disturb brain chiasmi. Programming is quiet - Appendix C gives examples, perhaps you can skip ahead if this discussion is becoming tedious.
Peter Denning speaks of a science of "natural information processes" in many fields. In my understanding, many fields have deep structures which appear in vast quantities of systematically collected data that can come to human awareness by applying computers. So the science of computers is really the science of "Computers and DNA Analysis" or "Computers and Weather Models." In each case, Genetics and Meteorology have taken on a partner in their science. In my view it is quite irrelevant what the names of the roles are. Everybody is in front of their screens working with their data call it what you will.
Computers have, of course, a knowledge base revolving strictly about computers. Theorist wedded to knowledge modes harking back to the encyclopedia can spend fruitful hours deciding whether computing is a science or engineering or just technology. One can also debate whether engineering is a science or merely the application of technology in various fields. Then one can separate engineering applications form the science of engineering itself. It may be that the epistemology of definitions, which certainly helped unify the quest for knowledge from the 17-8th centuries onwards, may not be so important today when everyone who gets a hallway with six offices and four labs may be working on a new science.
The same is the case with computing. Computing has departments. Computing has journals. Computing has problems to solve, horizons to push back. At some point the work in physics and materials science and in private industry lands in computer science for them to do with. Who is science and who is technology is old-think. Perhaps the term disciplines would be better. Less overhead.
The fact is that the creation, development and extension of general purpose algorithm processing environments means that many disciplines have taken computers on board. Digital machines can do serious work. Many disciplines have deep structures, possibly hidden structures, certainly information pathways in texts that are not grasped by human perception. Algorithms can store patterns within models that can uncover patterns. The literature on this is considerable and the list of disciplines in the natural sciences that have developed this perspective is growing apace. In some ways the influx of computing in the sciences and academic disciplines was prefigured at the end of the 19th century by statistics in sciences. Statistical Mechanics and Physics can be googled.
On some level, in this blog, we are actually in silly world. A professor of literature wants to pit his virtuosity in pattern recognition based on his extensive aesthetic experience with a text tradition against his caricature of computing. Man bites computer. Whatever. As part of the discussion of the three Times blogs, I have generated some lists of bi-labials in the Areopagitica, the output in the two posts above. The output is a list of words containing either or both of the bi-labial stops "b&p" arranged sequentially by sentence. Perhaps a few paragraphs to summarize the background would be helpful. [also read: BLOG3 above]
The object of the investigation is John Milton's Areopagitica. The idea to be tested is whether the letters "B and P," bi-labial stops, carry a specific meaning after sentence ca. 220 for the last 140 sentences. A very brief descriptive analysis consisting of a few paragraphs reports enthusiastically of a moment of inspiration reading sentence 220 that made the reader aware of the intentional phonetic play of Milton to indict Church Prelates and Protestant Presbyters of censorship. The reader in question is Prof. Stanley Fish. There is no contention of the fact that Milton indicts them, the question posed is: does he indict them phonetically? I recuse myself from judgement, but I will act as a friend of the court.
The list of bi-labials is clearly of little use in a discipline based on the very subjective act of reading, even by an acknowledged expert. The impressions gathered during reading at some point quite automatically flip over into certainty. Depending on the level of accomplishment of the reader, that certainty can take many forms. The problem is that the human mind cannot operate on data without organizing it into some structure that it affirms. The admission "I do not understand this" is really a signal that the game is over. Should the game continue, however, certainty will be achieved; perhaps a paper will be written, perhaps it will be graded or it will be reviewed. It may be an A+ or it may fail. This pedagogical structure and procedure assumes a defective perceptual mechanism struggling with difficult data. Or it simply assumes an existential situation where many contradictory stimuli are accepted and processed continually, not all successfully, none perfectly.
The problem is that disciplines do form; academies are built; texts are collected and studied. The goal is to teach to the point where reliable professionals can be certified. There has been a tradition of doing this in the West from the Greeks to the present, with some considerable interruptions. We have collected a considerable amount of testimony on the nature and development of this training of professionals to further knowledge.
Of particular interest is the separation of the study of texts from the study of the laws of nature, the study of the expressions of humans in writing and the study of the manifestations of nature. The latter has accepted computers and has developed fantastic vistas in its various disciplines based on computer processes. The study of texts can surely be considered the straggler in this development. The subjective internalization of the subjective utterance of humans through the ages leading to more subjective utterance will not go away easily.
The problem is the human capacity for certainty. Certainty will be achieved, no matter at what level of novice to expert with all sorts of special categories with uniforms of different colors. Disagreement is an essential feature of this certainty, for certainty hardens, it intensifies when under attack.
In our educational system we have managed to cull out a relatively small set of students and start them off on the laws of nature. Those who do not make the cut will receive degrees in humanities, English, history, languages, philosophy. There is an ethic that accompanies the concentration on texts that can live with the idea that the laws of nature are investigated elsewhere. Of course in most science fiction dramas that show this bifurcation, the story ends badly for the civilization that tolerates this split.
The solution could come from either side. The natural scientists could decide that texts, human expression, is part of "Natural History." Humans are animals and their writing contribute to our understanding. Or, the humanists, the professionals licensed to study the human tradition could try to turn the corner on subjectivity and work to attain an empirical dimension.
The fact is that in all natural sciences such moments happened when subjective speculation gave way to verifiable assertions. Authority yielded to demonstration. In the humanities the questions are still open. Authority is still the chief rhetorical device. But one of the contentious faction that is tolerated, because all factions are tolerated, is the faction for empiricism. Of course there is a great deal of certainty in humanities about empiricism and the majority is solidly inoculated against that plague.
However, although interest in the blogs of yesteryear is fading, let me hang my appeal for an empirical dimension in the study of text on this quite silly questions of the "Function of Bi-labials as Carriers of Meaning in the Areopagitica."
Below, I shall attempt to sketch out a strategy on how one would approach the texts of the Areopagitica with perl programs. I propose to test the B&P proposition by generating a list that will facilitate the examination of bi-labials sentence by sentence. I shall also execute the strategy with the actual programs as a teaching exercise to see if any insights develop. The purpose is to make the concept of "programming" and its usefulness for the study of text manifest - here is the actual program that answers this actual question. Words tend to hide from us in a text, they must be hunted down with skill and determination.
This is in response to the charge: digital humanists run the numbers before they read. To quote the charge:
"... in the digital humanities: first you run the numbers, and then you see if they prompt an interpretive hypothesis. The method, if it can be called that, is dictated by the capability of the tool. [Fish Blog 3]There is a half truth and a half misunderstanding in the sentence. The half truth is that "we do run the numbers," But we do not necessarily run them first. To be sure, one may run a test on all of Milton to see if some specific feature, well-known from some other corpus turns up, or Milton may be part of an even larger corpus; Corpus Linguistics would distract us here, we are focused on a single text of 18,000 words.
With our relatively small text we may also run the numbers to confirm or dispel some suspicion gathered from a reading. One may also have encountered some reading from the secondary literature that must be tested, e.g. the P&B theory. So it is entirely possible, likely even, to have an interpretive hypothesis in mind before running the numbers. I don't want to belabor the obvious, but the opposite has been asserted. For more detail on the referential problems with the word "opposite", see: Blog 3.
Generally, in programming around literary computing, i.e. programs run on texts of the canon (contemporary texts are often not available for this kind of work), reading is a prerequisite. It is certainly a prerequisite if one is a digital humanist working on Milton's Areopagitica, which I remember as a tough nut to crack my first semester in college when Chaucer, Milton, Shakespeare fry-up was still on the prescribed menu. I cannot count myself in that class; however, I have read at it and spent some considerable time recently trying to parse individual sentences and trying to appreciate the classical references.
First comes the first reading. It is also possible, likely even, that a first reading does NOT yield an interpretation or even a hint of a partial. The second and subsequent readings are aided by the computer.
The point is to find passages to read a second time. More on this below; however, should I have marked some passage in the first reading, it might be profitable to consult the computer to see if some similar semantic item exists or if some juxtapositions of the items exists, e.g. "Bishops and Presbyters (sen. 220)."
The answer is no, the construction is a one-off. But that is valuable information, factual information. No need to hunt if the forest is empty. There is however one other one-off, an early reference, sen. 26, to "Prelates" and "Presbyters." I may not have found this reference quickly without a computer, even had I noticed it in the first reading.
The notion that I would have remembered sen. 26 while I was reading sen. 220 is not guaranteed. It is certain however, that with a text of this size, I would find the reference quickly in even a cursory semantic inventory. As is, I have a good idea now of the distribution of this semantic group through the text. I consider a first reading and the subsequent time spent querying the text with a search engine valuable exploratory reading, efficient reading, without imperatives.
I cannot really think that Prof. Fish would want me to go on about some "interpretation" or interpretative proposition immediately upon finishing or even while reading. Interpretation is anchored in the text; the text is perceived by the mind and in some way is now located in the mind, the anchor lost overboard. It is crucial to keep the connection to the text; three words seems a slim line indeed. I suspect that Prof. Fish knows his Milton so well that he is rushing his shots; I see nothing wrong with exploring the situation, to make a couple of extra passes to see if a shot opens up. Milton is a special case, not many people can read his prose fluently enough to hear the phonemes; hat off. But the problem cuts across all texts, but especially working with difficult interior monologue texts, large modern novels, for example, it may take months or years even, to come up with a real interpretation groping towards originality; other people's interpretations often fill the gap. Computers are very helpful in testing other people's interpretations. I have had the privilege of working on some difficult novels for years before computers and then to observe the impact of computers, specifically, the impact of looking down a sorted word list, for the first time, ever, of a text. It is possible to tell of this experience, but it cannot really be communicated unless to someone who has worked on the same text. The novel is "Death of Virgil" by Broch [for a paper I wrote in the 1980's Google (Batke, Broch, LBS)].
It is also possible that one of many standard tests can be applied. One exploratory strategy is to look at the vocabulary of the first few paragraphs and to pin down how that vocabulary is developed. Looking at the first few paragraphs of the Areopagitica I am struck with a difficult challenge: the formal formulas of address impede the actual presentation of vocabulary that contributes to a specific point. There is talk of "public good," "writing" and the various states of mind while writing, "passion" for the subject, and the subject itself "liberty." A good start for a second read is the sections on liberty. Read them in sequential order: of the 13 instances, three in the header, one in sen. 3, two in sen. 4 and then 3 in sen. 304-305 and three more in the last 50 sentences.
Another strategy is to examine the new vocabulary that is introduced after an exposition should be long finished. Of the 4,000 unique words one would have to look at roughly a thousand that carry semantic information.
I am not able to claim an interpretation, but I have learned something about the text that I could nail on the wall were I the excitable type. Unfortunately, there are still some hours of semantic inventory to be done. Easy to do, and most important, the answers come immediately: liberty, 13 total, sen. 3, 4, 62, 217, 229, 280, 304, 306, 311, 329, 357. As you can see, there is only one path: from a question in the mind to the computer to a sequence of sentences in the text to the eye-ball on the text. The sentences are read, but they are read in sequence one after the other, dependent on similar semantic content, it is a form of directed reading.
This kind of reading, is of course possible with a printed concordance and as such nothing terribly new; yet, with a search and retrieval engine, there is much less fuss with finding editions and writing down numbers. There is also no fuss about searching lists of cognates and co-occurrences. There is also no fuss with finding a word on a page, not always instantaneous on a printed page, even if you know it is there (and is not the fault of my eyes). In short, index and retrieval engines have made concordance work efficient and logistically unproblematic. So, if we are to examine digital humanities, we have to ask ourselves, what was behind the impulse for concordances? Why was all that work done in the 19th and 20th centuries with "slips of paper" technology? Let me allow that question to hang out in rhetorical space for a bit.
Clearly, the readers of the past, the people who spent a life-time with Milton felt their grasp of the individual text required serious auxiliary constructs to the tune of writing every word and page number on a slip of paper and collating the slips. For the Areopagitica alone, that meant 18,000 slips of paper. That kind of work would point to a style of interpretation that does not rely on impression but on careful study of the semantic material. It depends on going through the video tape in slow motion to see just what the line-backers did during the pump-fake into the flat; did they flinch long enough to open up a screen pass? Pardon the time shift, but I would really like to conjure up a scholar of the later 19th century and what a secure grasp of a text entails, no computers, only paper and books. A secure grasp can be achieved in many ways.
A novice may be extremely secure in his or her estimation of his or her grasp of a text he or she has been assigned; that certainty will most likely be an illusion based on his or her healthy capacity for self-deception. Perhaps even Prof. Fish's secure certainty of his interpretive propositions is a form of impressionistic interaction with the text, perhaps fed by an insight that there is no secure grasp, only a judicious interaction, a well played game, the defeat of an opponent, in this case the pattern recognition of computers.
What precisely are the possibilities for an interaction of the mind with a stream of 18,000 words. First of all, the Areopagitica is not fiction. It is in form of a speech before parliament, a call for legislative action. For the legislature of the time there was no issue. With the position of parliament extremely fragile, about to be disbanded in the near future, it would under no circumstance alienate all factions by curtailing censorship. So no doubt, had they heard all about "liberty - censorship - learning - freedom," that would have been enough for most to pull the hat over the eyes and try to get a nap or perhaps go to the loo for 300 sentences worth. This document was really more important for later generations or even later centuries as a clear uncowed expression against censorship with citations from the classics and from church history, written while enduring censorship.
There are other classes of text, fiction, that actually simulate lived experience where there is a connection between words on the page and images in the mind. What is remembered of the reading, i.e. the lived experience, are the images and not the words. There is, in fact, only a tenuous connection between the words and the images. The lived experience may even end in confusion over an extended period of time. The first cheat is to accept either hints or a fully painted canvass from the secondary literature. Sometimes that is all there is. The second cheat is to go to the concordance.
Of course it is only a cheat in the sense that there is an athletic view of reading literature, with the clock running, that demands 1. that the essential be grasped 2. that all pertinent passages documenting the essential be found and excerpted and 3. that no untidy, possibly contradictory passages be ignored or swept under the rug rhetorically. Clearly, the three points are an imperative, the question is only, at what point in an engagement with a text do these three points solidify. If we can speculate that "interpretation" of texts started in earnest in the 19th century, we now have several generations of interpretations that show just how differently a text can be read over time. Text that were acclaimed for their view of the human condition one decade were reviled as degenerate the next decade, only to be rediscovered as shining beacons ten years later, only to be discarded as irrelevant and forgotten.
There are important questions here, questions of history, historical context, questions of shifting priorities of society, education and human self-awareness. If multiple readings are not only possible, but also not to be avoided, then a secure grasp of a text means that the text is securely grasped by the context of the mind grasping. At that point, the text is pretty much irrelevant; the mind will pick congenial vocabulary or give words congenial meanings.
There is enough play in the meaning of words 1. over historical time and 2. over lived time of the reader (learner, teacher, scholar) that the generation of images from the lived experience of reading carries no guarrantee of predictable, verifiable results. This was made painfully clear to me when I realized that I had always seen Hermann Broch as a victim of persecution who spent years in relative poverty and unhappy exile and an early death, writing a great work on the relation of the artist to despotic power. In the eighties there appeared essays reading proto-nazi tendencies in his work. One can view him as a industrialist turned writer with an elitist aesthetic. One can read Vergil's discussion with Caesar as an apology for power. There are many words, many long sentences over 800 pages. The easy thing is to integrate [read: mutate] the text into the ideology extant between the ears.
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We return to the question that the computer programs in this exercise are to show us.
What did a Milton scholar of yore attempt to when he, statistically probably a "he", went to a concordance and copied out the numbers for "liberty" and "freedom" or the numbers for "bishop" "presbyter" and "prelate" and all their forms. It is an attempt to hold several passages open before the eyes at the same time. I have done similar things with my copy of the "Magic Mountain" (no concordance alas). With one hand it is possible to hold open six different pages in a text, simultaneously, with a pair of glasses added, eight pages. With slips of paper it is possible have up to 50 passages queued for a quick look, but after that, too many slips means the same as no slips. Computers were not up to the task in the 1979's.
When holding open eight pages with glasses included, there is no real guarantee that all the dinner conversations in the Magic Mountain are there for comparison, especially since many go on for pages. The same goes for bi-labials in Milton. Before we start with a tentative list-based look at the semantics in Areopagitica, let us return to the "b&p question" and my contention that one can, and routinely does, run the numbers AFTER an interpretive proposition is in intellectual space. Once I decide bi-labials are important, digital humanities allows me to nail all of them to the wall, so they hold still, even if reading the text out loud was not a satisfactory experience, so I can at least look at them at leisure.
For example, sentences four and five of the Areopagitica:
213-liberty
217-hope,
234-expect;
235-but
237-complaints
241-deeply
244-speedily
250-bound
253-liberty
9-52-4-XXX
266-by
282-part
289-steepe
294-superstition
298-principles
301-beyond
310-bee
311-attributed
8-78-5-XXX
[9-52-4-XXX] Sentence 4 contains 52 words of which 9 are bp words etc. XXX shows a sentence cusp.
[311-attributed] The number before each word is the sequential number of the word in the text e.g. "bee attributed" are words 310 and 311, according to my count.
Let us not rush to dialectic steam rolling here. Of course you have your Milton in your hand while you are looking at these sentences. You can see the positional distance between the pb words, and you can read along with your text. If you are clever, however, you will have prepared your text to make the sentence numbers obvious, and also give an easy view of the relative size of the sentences.
For example:
|p4
For this is not the liberty which wee can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth, that let no man in this World expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply consider'd and speedily reform'd, then is the utmost bound of civill liberty attain'd, that wise men looke for.
|p5
To which if I now manifest by the very sound of this which I shall utter, that wee are already in good part arriv'd, and yet from such a steepe disadvantage of tyranny and superstition grounded into our principles as was beyond the manhood of a Roman recovery, it will bee attributed first, as is most due, to the strong assistance of God our deliverer, next to your faithfull guidance and undaunted Wisdome, Lords and Commons of England.
|p6
Neither is it in Gods esteeme the diminution of his glory, when honourable things are spoken of good men and worthy Magistrates; which if I now first should begin to doe, after so fair a progresse of your laudable deeds, and such a long obligement upon the whole Realme to your indefatigable virtues, I might be justly reckn'd among the tardiest, and the unwillingest of them that praise yee.
|p7
Nevertheless there being three principall things, without which all praising is but Courtship and flattery, First, when that only is prais'd which is solidly worth praise: next, when greatest likelihoods are brought that such things are truly and really in those persons to whom they are ascrib'd, the other, when he who praises, by shewing that such his actuall perswasion is of whom he writes, can demonstrate that he flatters not; the former two of these I have heretofore endeavour'd, rescuing the employment from him who went about to impaire your merits with a triviall and malignant Encomium; the latter as belonging chiefly to mine owne acquittall, that whom I so extoll'd I did not flatter, hath been reserv'd opportunely to this occasion.
Here are sentences 4 through 7. Should there still be some objections along the line of privileging a running sequential presentation of sentences, let that not stand in the way:
For this is not the liberty which wee can hope, that no grievance ever should arise in the Commonwealth, that let no man in this World expect; but when complaints are freely heard, deeply consider'd and speedily reform'd, then is the utmost bound of civill liberty attain'd, that wise men looke for. To which if I now manifest by the very sound of this which I shall utter, that wee are already in good part arriv'd, and yet from such a steepe disadvantage of tyranny and superstition grounded into our principles as was beyond the manhood of a Roman recovery, it will bee attributed first, as is most due, to the strong assistance of God our deliverer, next to your faithfull guidance and undaunted Wisdome, Lords and Commons of England. Neither is it in Gods esteeme the diminution of his glory, when honourable things are spoken of good men and worthy Magistrates; which if I now first should begin to doe, after so fair a progresse of your laudable deeds, and such a long obligement upon the whole Realme to your indefatigable virtues, I might be justly reckn'd among the tardiest, and the unwillingest of them that praise yee. Nevertheless there being three principall things, without which all praising is but Courtship and flattery, First, when that only is prais'd which is solidly worth praise: next, when greatest likelihoods are brought that such things are truly and really in those persons to whom they are ascrib'd, the other, when he who praises, by shewing that such his actuall perswasion is of whom he writes, can demonstrate that he flatters not; the former two of these I have heretofore endeavour'd, rescuing the employment from him who went about to impaire your merits with a triviall and malignant Encomium; the latter as belonging chiefly to mine owne acquittall, that whom I so extoll'd I did not flatter, hath been reserv'd opportunely to this occasion.
Given the distinctly unmodern phrase and clause structure of Milton's prose, I prefer the numbered and separated version. Given all the various printings of this work over time, I think digital humanist should be allowed to come up with a version that can be read on an i-Phone on the sub-way.
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| Win 1 - ratios, Win2 setences with "b or p", Win 4 the text (TextPad detail) Note: each window can scroll independently. |
One further suggestion is to put the list of bi-labials in one window, and in the window adjacent, the texts with numbered and separated sentences. As a third window I would suggest a list of sentences with the ratio of bi-labials to the words in the sentence, i.e. what percentage of the words have a bi-l; 31% is the most and occurs in three sentences.
Below is the list of ratios by sentence numbers; it is to be used if you are going through the text sequentially, to test the phonetic impression while reading:
0.13, 11, 85, 1
0.13, 9, 72, 2
0.18, 9, 50, 3
0.17, 9, 52, 4
0.10, 8, 78, 5
0.14, 10, 69, 6
0.15, 19, 123, 7
0.17, 7, 42, 8
0.16, 15, 94, 9
0.14, 11, 78, 10
0.10, 8, 78, 11
0.10, 5, 51, 12
0.08, 4, 48, 13
0.19, 6, 31, 14
0.14, 18, 129, 15
0.19, 19, 99, 16
0.26, 11, 42, 17
0.18, 16, 88, 18
Below is the same list sorted by the ratio of bi-l's: [Note: sen.#23 has roughly a third of its words with bi-l's, so on down to 23%. This is to read into the heavy concentrators, easy if the window with the numbered sentences is up.]
The idea is to hang with an idea long enough for the first impression to evaporate. The temptation is to reinforce the original stimulous. When encountering texts after the initial experience, the notion of "Epoché" (suspension of judgement) is helpful. If perfect perception is not possible (exceptions noted) one may be able to sneak up on a text by holding it suspended in virtual space and seeing many parts of it at the same time. Suspend judgement for a little while, while examining the text closer, the text suspended virtually, the flow paused briefly. True, the visceral experience of the flow of the text is gone, a mere memory, but there may be an intellectual experience lurking when the mind can take its sweet time with a text in virtual suspension.
0.31, 10, 32, 23
0.31, 15, 49, 38
0.31, 4, 13, 105
0.30, 7, 23, 94
0.29, 6, 21, 108
0.28, 13, 47, 228
0.28, 7, 25, 56
0.27, 6, 22, 168
0.27, 10, 37, 117
0.26, 11, 42, 17
0.26, 18, 70, 349
0.26, 9, 35, 171
0.25, 7, 28, 54
0.25, 7, 28, 46
0.25, 9, 36, 131
0.25, 3, 12, 146
0.25, 2, 8, 321
0.24, 6, 25, 58
0.24, 8, 34, 172
0.24, 8, 34, 212
0.24, 4, 17, 291
0.24, 8, 34, 356
0.24, 14, 58, 254
There are other options that one might consider. I can present the text with all the b's marked in yellow and all the p's marked in blue, that would simulate a synesthetic perception. I can also mark all the bi-l in the color of choice, mauve or lincoln green.
Stay tuned...
