Talk:Humanities

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[edit] Old talk

"The humanities are the classics (as derived from classical antiquity) and liberal arts; those subjects supposedly taught for their social and intellectual merit, rather than for pragmatic use."

I think the statement above is ignorant bigotry. Obviously, although many areas of mathematics have great pragmatic utility, others are studied primarily for their intellectual merit and esthetic beauty, and yet they are not humanities. Humanities are fields that study humans, human life, and human societies. To imply that it is only in fields studying humans, human life, and human societies that one finds "intellectual merit" is bigotry. Michael Hardy 21:48, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

Better to change the definition than flag it as disputed. Be bold in editing. DJ Clayworth 22:06, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

By all means go ahead and add something useful to this stub. However, the only you refer to in your statement cannot be deduced from the text of the article. --KF 22:07, 27 Oct 2003 (UTC)

The statement doesn't appear to make sense unless "only" was intended. Another problem is that the statement would seem to imply the implausible proposition that the study of humans lacks pragmatic utility. I'd have gone ahead and boldly edited if I hadn't been pressed for time when I wrote these comments. Michael Hardy 00:00, 28 Oct 2003 (UTC)

If humanities are a "study of the human condition", does psychology qualify? If not, is the definition perhaps flawed in that it is too broad? --OldakQuill 22:16, 22 Mar 2004 (UTC)

"I stand upon a notch between Two Eternities." -thoreau-

The Humanities are based in (not on) the Human Condition. In that context, psychology certainly applies, but only if it is practiced Hippocratically and explained in Common Language. The same goes for Mathematics. The dividing lines are between Good and Evil and The Ancestry of Humanity and its Posterity.

Humanitarianism is Practical Humanity guided by enlightenment from the study of the Human Condition in the broadest possible context and an earnest desire to improve it (see altruism). The Humanities have given the Human Race a Continuum through which to pupetuate this process.  : Quinobi

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[edit] mathematics

I was always taught that mathematics was one of the humanities. Indeed, this is the conclusion reached by most contemporary philosophers of mathematics. It is certainly not a science or a natural science, because it is not dependent on empirical observation. Its motivations and drives, like the other humanities, cannot be reduced to a desire to understand natural phenomenon, which is the defining characteristic of the sciences. Revolver 00:43, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Languages?

Just wondering if perhaps the study of foreign languages and their associated literary tradition (letters) and also the study of language itself (linguistics) should be included here.

Arcan 10:34, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Linguistics is universally regarded as a social science. I'm going to remove the linguistics reference. cdworetzky 08:40, 23 July 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense to me, but my school (Haverford College, in the U.S.) classifies linguistics classes (sociolinguistics being the only exception) as humanities. --Galaxiaad 15:01, 24 July 2006 (UTC)
That seems unusual to me. Do you know anyone else who does so? Maurreen 15:49, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

The study of languages at university level is within the scope of "philology". Philology comes under literature as a humanities subject.

[edit] Planning -- what will this article cover and how will this be divided?

Suggestioned:

  • Lead - a definition of the humanities, some disciplines, when word is used
  • History

Here's an an excerpt from the Britannica article for inspiration:

"The modern conception of the humanities has its origin in the classical Greek paideia, a course of general education dating from the sophists in the mid-5th century BC, which prepared young men for active citizenship in the polis, or city-state; and in Cicero's humanitas (literally, “human nature”), a program of training proper for orators, first set forth in De Oratore (Of the Orator) in 55 BC. In the early Middle Ages the Church Fathers, including St. Augustine, himself a rhetorician, adapted paideia and humanitas—or the bonae (“good”), or liberales (“liberal”), arts, as they were also called—to a program of basic Christian education; mathematics, linguistic and philological studies, and some history, philosophy, and science were included.

The word humanitas, although not the substance of its component disciplines, dropped out of common use in the later Middle Ages but underwent a flowering and a transformation in the Renaissance. The term studia humanitatis (“studies of humanity”) was used by 15th-century Italian humanists to denote secular literary and scholarly activities (in grammar, rhetoric, poetry, history, moral philosophy, and ancient Greek and Latin studies) that the humanists thought to be essentially humane and classical studies rather than divine ones. In the 18th century, Denis Diderot and the French Encyclopédistes censured studia humanitatis for what they claimed had by then become its dry, exclusive concentration on Latin and Greek texts and language. By the 19th century, when the purview of the humanities expanded, the humanities had begun to take their identity not so much from their separation from the realm of the divine as from their exclusion of the material and methods of the maturing physical sciences, which tended to examine the world "

  • Bombastic modern essayists's thoughts on the matter

What else?

Lotsofissues 21:42, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

The French page seems to have a lot of material on it, could that be a source of ideas? (My French is pretty pauvre, je regrette) Walkerma 01:13, 9 January 2006 (UTC)

I organised the page loosely as suggested above, with some added sections I thought appropriate. I have written some sections as best I could (I'm a chemist by training!), but the books I have are very much focused on the US. I would encourage those who work in this field to edit my attempts, which (being based on reading books) may miss the point at times. I will try to add a graph later to show changes in the humanities, and I may add a section on the concern about the effect of computers. Walkerma 07:58, 15 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] At my school

History, Geography and Business & Economics are classed as Humanities. — Wackymacs 18:03, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

  • Oh. I should also note that this is in the United Kingdom, so maybe this information should be added somewhere to the article. — Wackymacs 18:06, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
  • I think this was the case in my school also. It was in the UK. --Oldak Quill 23:29, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
  • History is classified here as humanities. The others are social sciences. in the Netherlands. Globe-trotter 01:10, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Worldwide view

I'm a chemist so it's a struggle for me to work on this, but I am working through four books on the subject. However all of the views in these books cover the humanities in Europe or the US. I see someone has just tagged this article as "not representing a worldwide view" so I am not the only one concerned about this. Is there someone who could provide a perspective of the humanities from (say) China or the Arab world (both of which have articles on the Humanities)? Also, in the French article the last sentence is "Les situations « officielles » des disciplines sont différentes selon les pays de la francophonie en particulier." This means (I think) "The official organisation of disciplines is different in French-speaking countries in particular." So we should get the Francophone view also. Walkerma 18:28, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

Being confined to the US *and* Europe would sadly be still better than our current article (let alone some ideal "worldwide view"). The present article is entirely confined to the US. --Oldak Quill 21:32, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
It should be noted that, in Francophone communities, the idea of "humanities" or "les science humains" is more closely related to the Germanic-speaking communities discipline of "social sciences" (e.g. sociology, psychology, economics) User:Guest 21:48, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Philosophy

Although some aspects of philosophy concern the "human condition" (eg. epistemology), *many* do not. I had always considered it a social science. If philosophy were to be included then surely sociology/psychology should also - they are as concerned with the "human condition" as epistemology. Any thoughts on this? --Oldak Quill 21:29, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

The reason why philosophy is not considered a social science (at least in most places) is because of its methods of discovery. The natural and social sciences depend on experiments and empirical data, although the social sciences sometimes face difficulties in performing experiments (it'd be unethical and impractical to start a war in order to study how societies rebuild themselves). Philosophy and the other humanities usually arrive at their conclusions through other means, such as a close reading of a text or through "thought experiments." Without necessarily criticizing the validity of these methods, they are not empirical and are usually open to much more interpretation than say a physicist's work. --Impaciente 17:01, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
Surely the scoial sciences study the human condition too, but such fact is not ruled out at all by the intro statement here about "human condition." As for philosophy, every major branch of it, except perhaps basic logic, touches on the human condition (and higher logics such as metalogic, modal logic, and intentional logic arguably *do* address the human condition). --Tmusgrove 04:12, 21 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Intro sentence is terrible

The current intro sentence for this article is horrible:

"The humanities are a group of academic subjects united by a commitment to studying aspects of the human condition and a qualitative approach that generally prevents a single paradigm from coming to define any discipline."

What the heck does that mean? Try comparing it with Encyclopedia Britannica's intro:

"The humanities are those branches of knowledge that concern themselves with human beings and their culture or with analytic and critical methods of inquiry derived from an appreciation of human values and of the unique ability of the human spirit to express itself."

Can we come up with something better? Kaldari 02:43, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Branches

Is there any opposition to having one or more sections for various branches, such as art, history, etc? Maurreen 04:18, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Don't see how it could hurt to try. Don't go overboard with detailing the specific branches (there should probably only be 2–3 paragraphs at most for each, and we should avoid giving unbalanced coverage to one or two humanities fields over the others), but some more detail on the actual fields concerned, and perhaps how they are studied in relation to one another in a "humanities" program, could certainly be valuable and appropriate. And it'd probably be a hell of a lot better than a simple list! -Silence 04:51, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Relevevancy

"The humanities will have to adapt rapidly to these changes if they are to remain relevant."

That statement, from "Humanities in the digital age" is just wrong. The Humanities cannot become irrelevent anymore than math or the social sciences. The term "Humanities" refers to the very field of study that is the human of humanity, it can never become irrelevent. As long as there are humans the field will be relevent, regardless of whether or not it remains a wide spread field of human interest.--Shadowlance 22:32, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this concern, and would like to voice a broader concern about the "Humanities today" section. The section is relatively well-sourced, which is nice -- but a lot of its summary assertions are garbled, superficial, or just plain wrong. I think it needs a lot of clean-up work, and may take a crack at it myself, but comments would be welcome. -- Rbellin|Talk 23:10, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Astrology

I've cut the following paragraph until a source can be provided:

These sections originally corresponded to Astrological concepts, namely being the seven traditional Astrological planets. A typical course of study began with grammar, ruled by the fastest planet, the Moon, and culminated with Saturn, governing Astronomia, which included both astronomy and astrology. [citation needed]

The link to the astrology article appeared to contain a reference, but in fact its "external" link pointed to the same assertion on an out-of-date Wikipedia mirror, hardly an appropriate reference. If the correspondence between the Zodiac and the liberal arts indeed historically existed (I'm not even sure what "originally" is supposed to mean here), a source shouldn't be too hard to find. -- Rbellin|Talk 23:10, 14 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sorokin ?

Sorokin seems like an interesting person, but his unlinked picture unexplained in the text (apparently illustrating post-modern thinkers) seems very disproportionate when only Plato and Shakespeare are shown above.--jb 15:48, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

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