Accepting and Modeling Uncertainty

This article aims to outline the challenge of uncertainty for the construction of computational models in the humanities. Since we can neither ignore nor eliminate uncertainty, we need to model it, and so we need computational models of uncertainty. Such models already exist and are being used in practical applications. There is ongoing fundamental research on uncertainty and its representation in mathematics, philosophy, and computer science. Some of these approaches may be suitable for modeling uncertainty in the humanities—but we are still lacking the »bridge« that could relate the uncertainty encountered in the humanities to such formal modeling frameworks. We argue that DH needs to go beyond project-specific models of uncertainty and consider uncertainty more generally; in particular, we must closely examine various types of uncertainty in the humanities and seek to develop more general frameworks for handling it