The Epistemological Value of the Computational Turn in Scholarly Editing

In the last decade a decidedly computational turn in scholarly editing is noticeable. Texts are not just encoded anymore. To store and execute scholarly decisions increasingly also program code is applied, which thereby becomes a computational expression of scholarly theory. Theorists and practitioners of such computational approaches have not just put forward scalability and replicability as motivations for computational methods, but also the promise of increased analytical power and on the horizon a changed epistemology. This panel invites some of the most visible proponents of these approaches to reflect on these promises and especially to try to deepen our understanding of the epistemological value that is tied to applying code in the domain of scholarly textual editing.