The Modeling of Alchemical Decknamen: On the Potential of Digital Representation for Deepening Understanding in the Humanities

Alchemical language is an example of scientia poetica, its Decknamen are coded, ornate and instable. But alchemical language shouldn’t remain ultimate riddle it has come to represent. Couldn’t a computer bring clarity into the poetics of alchemy? After all, poetry is a system and systems can be modeled. Alchemical language is full of ambiguity but modern Digital Humanities tools allow to model exactly this uncertainty. Computational methods like Natural Language Processing (NLP), Named Entity Recognition (NER) and knowledge representation technologies, for example using thesauri of the terms of alchemy in SKOS-standard-conformant XML, allow to handle the typical ambiguity of alchemical data. We can make implicit instances of knowledge explicit in a digital thesaurus while the linking between the concrete word (a string or label) in a text to the thesaurus remains loose enough to allow for imprecise poetic language. Modeling is the iterative process of systematic representation of certain aspects of reality. In order to model, we need make knowledge explicit. Once a model is created for the purpose of study, the failings of the model teach us new insights: Computational models are “temporary states in a process of coming to know”, in which computers are not “knowledge jukeboxes” but “representation machines” (McCarty 2004, 255). They create an systematic approximation of reality and from its shortcomings we learn about the reality we aimed to model. This paper aims to show uses of modeling alchemical terms in a digital thesaurus using the example of Michael Maier’s (1568-1622) writings.