Intersection Between Computer Science and History?

Question

I am a computer science undergrad with a great interest in history. Lately I have been asking myself if there are general aspects or specialties of computer science which lend themselves to the study of history. Given that I would likely find any such combination of great interest and others here would too, I thought this would be a good topic to ask here. Not only are there potentially other technically mind people, but also history professionals who may already be working with specific computer technology, methods, and algorithms.

• Brownie points for those who provide specific references of potentially applicable technology (such as algorithms, programs, methodology, etc.)
• Super OMG points for those who provide specific avenues of research which combine the study of history with approaches from computational disciplines.

I have some specific examples which I will provide in the answer section if there is some confusion over the general question or if answers are not necessarily forthcoming.

P.S. - I understand that this is a question that may be better suited to another forum (or to two forums?). I understand if the community feels that this question needs to be migrated.

Answer 1

The first thing that came to my mind reading your question certainly is data storage and retrieval. History often is a lot of documents. Databases can be immensely helpful for storing, accessing, and cross-referencing large piles of (historical) data, and complex algorithms can be used to analyze such data. Computer analysis can also be very helpful in decoding forgotten writing systems and languages.

Another common application is algorithms helping archaeologists to do their work. For example, algorithms are used to analyze satellite images to identify likely spots to find artifacts (the remainings of old settlements are often small hills), or create 3D models of settlements, palaces, and temples. (Contrary to popular believe, archeology doesn't only deal with prehistory, but is also concerned with finding proof of what can be found in old texts.)

Quite a daring application is the extrapolation of the future from the history. Meadows/Meadows/Randers/Behrens did that in the Club of Rome's The Limits to Growth study in the early 70s (and in the 90s with the sequel Beyond the Limits):

1. Find an set of algorithms which, given a specific starting point in history, model the development of the earth/humanity/industry/whatever correctly up to the present.
2. Let the algorithm continue into the future.

The results are, basically, a prediction of the future, based on which mankind could perform corrective actions.

Answer 2

It's a fascinating question. One of the greatest contributions of computer science to the study of history is the fact that people created computer science, which is based on logic. There is quite a long process between the invention of logic, and it's encoding into the physical realm through machine logic. This fact sheds a bright light on your search for an algorithm.

I suppose you would expect to find something meaningful from such an endeavor? Perhaps you think that if you succeeded at finding these algorithms that "mankind could perform corrective actions" as it says in your accepted answer. These 'corrective actions' could have profound effects on history. Might that be the purpose of your search?

But the thing you search for negates and obviates the very purpose of your search.

There is a logical error in the purpose of your search, because the computer algorithms you search for would not be able to account for the fact that man's actions are purposive. In fact such purpose would 'break' your algorithm.

Imagine your algorithm trying to account for the fact that you thought you could find an algorithm of history, thought you had found it, and then performed "corrective action". Then imagine that there are millions of other people, with millions of other even wilder ideas also trying to perform corrective actions using their own computer or other types of algorithms.

For further analysis of this fascinating problem you should probably read "Theory and History" by Ludwig von Mises: http://mises.org/th.asp. It is a theory of history which includes the fact that when we act we act with purpose, which would be why you are asking the question in the first place.

Answer 3

As sbi noted, relational databases can be used for analyzing historical data. A specific example comes from the scholarly work The First Crusaders, 1095-1131 by renowned crusade scholar Jonathan Riley-Smith. This book focuses on studying the first generation of crusaders. In the introduction Riley-Smith explains how he used an Oracle database to store basic information about men and women associated with crusading, pilgrimage, and settlement in the Holy Land during this period. The system provided a way to produce family trees, identify points of contact between groups of people, and identify trends in the data.

Aside from relational databases, history and computer science can intersect in entertainment, such as historical video games. Many games take place in a historical setting, and historical knowledge would be useful for producing such games. Some games, such as The Falklands War 1982, clearly attempt to make historical accuracy one of their selling points.

Answer 4

Attempts to produce quantitative history, ie cliometrics within Economic history; may make more computationally intensive demands than traditional text interpretation. This kind of economic history is not viewed as a core element of the discipline. The computational requirements are probably computationally boring from a theoretical perspective; and, replication from an applied perspective.

Regarding history par history, historians regularly require the service of information professionals:

• Librarians
• Curators
• Archivists
• Records officers

we can probably add a couple here,

• Database architects
• Data structure analysts
• OCR theorists
• Semantic analysts
• GIS coding and analysis designers

But this is very much a service relationship, with the profession of semantically oriented computer scientists serving the needs of historians, much like archivists serve the needs of historians but are a profession unto themselves.

Obviously solving AI will solve history—if the AI is cheaper than training historians. But that isn't really a "problem" specific to history; it is the specific implementation of a general problem.

We can reverse this—historians could well serve computer science through an analysis of the conduct and engagement of the discipline. I've read a decent monograph on scale and funding waves and the development of multiple distinct types of computing company. It suggests that old models retain their utility in domains where old funding structures and old systems-of-problems remain.

There's no real transdisciplinary space; but maybe there is room for project level interdisciplinary cooperation. From what I've generally seen of the concept of "Digital Humanities" it appears to be an ark to save literary criticism from institutional execution; and the few historians who participate participate more as information professionals than as historians.

ymmv.

Answer 5

I'll separate my answer into two: ancient history and modern history.

Ancient history

Personally, I think the most interesting and very "new" field is the use of DNA analysis to study ancient human migrations. See for example the Wikipedia article Models of migration to the New World and Mitochondrial Eve. This field uses information that has survived up until today (sort of like archaeology) but that is too complex and numerous to understand simply by "looking at it" (there is also some applications in archeology more directly, as discussed in a different answer here) and where there are no written sources. I am no biologist but if I was 19 again this field is something I would have seriously considered aiming for. Think about it: for most of the history of humans we have no written or sources - no names of empires, wars, kings or anything - only what we can dig up, what we can infer from language relationship (another possible field! See computational linguistics though I don't know if that article has any historical applications) and from genetics.

No idea about how the actual practical research works but I imagine it has to have a lot of algorithms and computation... some references to research papers are in the Wikipedia article and in other articles linked from those.

Modern (and "early modern") history

For more modern periods, there is a lot of data that is complex and needs algorithms to be made sense of. This is not only the case for the last decades; rich census data is available for some countries from at least the mid-1800s and has to a large extent already been digitized. See for example the data sets at http://www.ipums.org/. For more recent periods, most aspects of economic history can involve some sort of computation, in particular if there is a lot of data. Google "cliometrics", "econometrics" and look into economic history in general. A lot of this might be more statistics than computer science, though.