A common narrative around digital humanities paints it as a realm of ease where pressing a button magically generates statistical insights but does not contribute to serious scholarship. Our reality, however, is quite different. Computational methods do not eliminate the need for manual curation of sources, in-depth subject knowledge, let alone reading. By navigating the complexities of historical data, the goal is to form new perspectives that deepen our historical understanding and, perhaps, open the eyes of others as well.

Many historians lean heavily on archival, testimonial, and oftentimes anecdotal evidence. While qualitative perspectives are crucial, incorporating quantitative aspects is just as important for comprehending phenomena such as the evolution of Scottish Enlightenment publishing (as demonstrated in this article) and, for example, authorship attribution (explored in our recent work elsewhere: https://digitalenlightenmentstudies.org/article/id/6/; https://muse.jhu.edu/article/802445). Addressing concerns about the novelty of statistical approaches, we align our results with earlier research, engaging with scepticism about the reliability of computational methods in understanding historical change. This is something that also other historians need to confront. Ignoring the role of statistical evidence is not a viable option.

One interesting aspect about the intersection of traditional historical research and digital humanities lies in the expectations surrounding such work. There is a common misconception that computational methods will either bring about an overnight—and ominous—change in the humanities or they are mere hot air. Readers of The Historical Journal, if any, are likely to be aware that, for example, the Skinnerian contextual revolution in intellectual history took decades to take root, even though some judged it to be rotten from the outset. This raises the question of whether we should characterise such inevitable methodological transformations of core research as revolutions in the first place or see them on a continuum. For us, the inclusion of quantitative methods is a natural part of the evolution of the contextual approach to historical data.

Simultaneously, some scholars working with traditional methods seem to hold a keen interest to highlight discrepancies when results based on statistical evidence either align with or diverge from established research. We find ourselves walking a paradoxical tightrope where everything new is judged offhand to be already known or untrustworthy. With respect to digital humanities this will naturally change in the future when scholars look forward, incorporate quantitative methods in their toolbox and engage with results that are discovered based on mixed methods.

In this article, we take particular delight in showcasing a century of dynamic change in Scottish Enlightenment publishing. Our primary objective was to model and visualise how publications, such as David Hume’s journey from Edinburgh to the global market, shaped the Scottish Enlightenment. Such a ‘birds-eye view’ could not be achieved by writing monographs based on archival evidence of each of the dozens of publishers and printers included in the process, because the substance to understand the dynamics of the printing networks would still be missing. Hence, with our approach we add a unique dimension to the existing body of knowledge that would be impossible without digital humanities.