From "counting words" to the Digital Humanities

Nowadays, Digital Humanities is a booming subject, but it has a long history. "Quantitative Literary Studies" at the University of Stuttgart investigates how computational methods have been used for the analysis and interpretation of language and literature since the early 19th century. The German Research Foundation (DFG) has now approved the continuation of the project. In the upcoming funding period, project manager Dr. Toni Bernhart (Institute of Literary Studies, NDL II) wants to explore the pioneering achievements of philosopher Max Bense as well as computer scientists Rul Gunzenhäuser and Theo Lutz for quantitative literary studies. As early as in the 19th century, researchers examined how to capture and explore aesthetic, formal and content peculiarities of texts through quantification and statistical standardization. But until far into the 20th century, such approaches were considered marginal phenomena in the humanities, often disparaged as "word counting" or simply not taken seriously. Rather, it was representatives of other disciplines who were mathematically engaged in literature at the time: Thomas Young, for example, known for his (unsuccessful) attempts to decode Egyptian hieroglyphs with the help of probability calculation, was a doctor. Augustus De Morgan, who tried to clarify the authorship of letters from the Apostle Paul, was a mathematician. A meteorologist, Thomas C. Mendenhall, dealt with the uncertain authorship of Shakespeare dramas. Literary scientists characterized such experiments as curious activities by non-skilled dilettantes. It was only in the 20th century and in the course of digitalization that they increasingly used - at first quite simple - mathematical methods. Counting machines and "human" computers