Analysis tool or research methodology

is there an epistemology for patterns?

Dan Dixon

pp. 191-209

in: David M. Berry (ed), Understanding digital humanities, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Intuition and pattern recognition are, consciously or unconsciously, used across all realms of rigorous enquiry, from both hard and soft sciences to the humanities, as well as in more applied disciplines. In fact, it could almost be said to be the one common factor in all their approaches to knowledge generation. In many disciplines pattern recognition is often dismissed as merely a means of achieving inspiration or getting that first hunch along the route of enquiry. However in the digital humanities it can sometimes seem that the search for patterns can be an end in itself.