Towards Scientific Workflows and Computer Simulation as a Method in Digital Humanities

Abstract

This paper presents ongoing work on investigating text mining by scientific workflows and hypotheses testing by computer simulation as new digital methods in the digital humanities and particularly in the literary studies. In the course of the eXplore! project, the methods are developed for analyzing autobiographic texts and particularly for investigating the diaries of Klaus Mann, a famous German writer, with regards to the influences on the writer’s literary productivity. Text mining is used to build up a data basis for an agent-based model that can be used in simulation studies to answer what-if-questions about a writer’s creative writing processes. A further focus is put on the reusability of these methods to facilitate an application beyond the project’s pilot study. For this purpose, we model and apply scientific workflows, populate a repository of proven workflows, and investigate an approach to reuse assistance by case-based reasoning.