Software Diagnostics and Observability Institute

Humanistic evidence and the examination of interpretations

PDF: https://www.dumpanalysis.org/files/History_of_Diagnostics_Observability_...

Let us consider a manuscript containing a copying error, a painting concealing an earlier composition, and a digital archive in which a surviving letter cannot be found. Each presents a different diagnostic problem. Before proposing a correction, we need to examine the artifact, the representation through which we observe it, and the explanation we construct.

In History of Diagnostics, Observability, and Debugging in Humanities, we follow these relationships through oral traditions, textual criticism, historical scholarship, philosophy, literature, art, archaeology, music, and digital humanities. We examine how scholars compared manuscripts, questioned documentary authenticity, deciphered inscriptions, investigated conceptual confusion, and preserved the evidence behind their conclusions.

The history also concerns the limits of correction. A disagreement may depend on different interpretations of the same evidence. An apparent absence may result from how a collection was assembled or searched. A restoration may change the material that a later investigator needs to examine. Some investigations produce a corrected reading; others produce a narrower claim or a documented set of alternatives.

We connect these histories with our pattern-oriented software diagnostics, software narratology, and trace and log analysis. Context, dependencies, discontinuities, and changes between representations provide recurring opportunities for investigation. Humanistic methods also help us question how a recorded trace acquired its form and meaning.

Seven parts and 35 chapters are complemented by a chronology, glossary, evidence taxonomy, and 84 references. Together, they examine how observations become evidence, how explanations are tested, and how the history of an investigation can remain available to the next reader.