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Humanities vs. science by dr. s. radhakrishnan.

B Sc III Semester Basic English , NEP Syllabus

Summary of Eassy

Gulbraga University Gulbraga, Raichur University NEP Syllabus

About the author:

Sarvepally Radhakrishnan (1888-1975) was India’s Vice President and President and also a great thinker, teacher and public intellectual. His interest was in Philosophy and Religion. He was elected to Oxford’s most prestigious Spalding Professorship in Eastern Religions and Ethics. Every year our country observes September 5th , the day on which Radhakrishnan was born as Teacher’s Day. The Bharat Ratna, India’s highest civilian honour, was conferred on him in 1954.

Summary of the Essay :-

The three obstacles in the way of national development that Radhakrishnan identifies are ignorance, disease and poverty. It is a chain – one connected to the other. By eradicating ignorance the other two can be eradicated. Educated people, who have competence and skill, sense of direction and a social purpose, can transform the world. Technological education without the complement of humanistic studies will be imperfect, lop-sided and deficient. Science divorced from moral values is not acceptable. Science is both knowledge and power. It has interest as well as utility. It demands disciplined devotion to the pursuit of truth. It develops an attitude of tolerance, open-mindedness, freedom from prejudice and hospitality to new ideas. It shows us the inexhaustible richness of the world, it’s unexpectedness, it’s wonder.

Humanities are equally important because they tell us about our own nature and how we have a deeper meditation over the subject of life. The obstacles to human well-being are in the minds of men. Hatred, folly, erroneous beliefs and uncivil passions make us blind to truth. To remedy this, we need, in addition to technological knowledge and skill, an understanding heart and wisdom.

So we have had a spiritual revolution, a social revolution, a political revolution, and an industrial revolution. In the ancient times Indian wisdom was intricately connected to the wisdom of other parts of the world. For example in the field of medicine or mathematics one finds the influence of the Greek, the Roman and the West Asian. The advances in science were brought about by Newton, an Englishman, Kepler, a German, Copernicus, a Pole and Galileo, an Italian. Their work brought about great changes in the world. They worked for the human world at large. Radhakrishnan finds, the period of political subjugation, as the event which cut India of from the mainstream of history. But he hopes that after independence India would become proficient enough to regain its past glory. He asserts that if we want to remove the evils of society, we need to have a scientific outlook. We should erase from our minds old fashioned thoughts and superstitions. A sense of human dignity or self-esteem has to be regained along with a sense of responsibility. The problem with universities is that they produce either seers or men with mechanical skills. A blend of the two is possible and this should take place because truth is indivisible. Whether it is historical truth, scientific truth, literary truth, the approaches may be different, but the ultimate gain is the same. Dr. Radhakrishnan emphasizes the fact that we are oppressed by many evils like poverty, disease, ignorance etc. But he also emphasizes that these difficulties are not due to forces outside, but a lack of control that we have. It is not weapons that destroy us but lack of wisdom. It is the human being who destroys the rest of the humanity. If we want to reform ourselves we have to aim at Atma Samskriti which is the development of human nature and refinement of the human spirit. All disciplines lead to one end an insight into oneself, an insight into reality should be the end of all disciplines. Every human individual must look up to himself not as living on the outer surface of things. There is a living depth in him. Even the arts that we foster are just a means to grasping the eternal. All sciences are there for us but we are incapable of using them for refining our own spirit. Adhyathma vidya or the knowledge of your own self is the greatest science.

Some Question and Answers :-

What is Radhakrishnan science vs humanities?

Radhakrishnan points out that technological education without the complement of humanistic studies will be imperfect and deficient. Science divorced from moral values is not acceptable. Therefore, he recommends an integrated study of humanities and sciences. Science is both knowledge and power.

What is the difference between the humanities and the sciences?

Both Humanities and Social Science study human beings, our cultures, and societies. However, Humanities have a subjective, critical-thinking or opinion-based approach. Social Science has an objective approach based on research and scientific evidence.

Who is the father of humanities?

Theodore Rabb, Historian and Founder of the Humanities Sequence, Dies at 81 — Princeton University Humanities Council.

What are Radhakrishnan’s views on the study of science humanities and religion bring out in detail?

Radhakrishnan understood the current emphasis on the study of science and technology that had provided immense facilities to modem men in every country. But he reminded the students how humanities are also important, humanities provide a clue to nature they give us ideas of our growth, our impulses, and aspirations.

What is meant by humanities and science?

The social sciences focuses on subjects like economics, psychology, and history, while the humanities explore philosophy, languages and literature, and the arts. Students following this pathway develop strong communication and critical thinking skills, as well as an understanding of cultural differences.

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Humanities vs. Science

What's the difference.

Humanities and science are two distinct fields of study that offer different perspectives on understanding the world. Humanities focus on the study of human culture, history, literature, philosophy, and art, aiming to explore the complexities of human experiences and emotions. It emphasizes critical thinking, interpretation, and subjective analysis. On the other hand, science is a systematic approach to understanding the natural world through observation, experimentation, and evidence-based reasoning. It seeks to uncover objective truths about the physical universe, often relying on quantitative data and empirical evidence. While humanities delve into the subjective and qualitative aspects of human existence, science aims to uncover objective and quantitative knowledge about the natural world. Both fields contribute to our understanding of the world, offering unique insights and perspectives.

Further Detail

Introduction.

Humanities and Science are two distinct fields of study that contribute to our understanding of the world and human experience. While they may seem different in their approaches and methodologies, both disciplines offer unique perspectives and valuable insights. In this article, we will explore the attributes of Humanities and Science, highlighting their similarities and differences.

Exploring the Humanities

The Humanities encompass a wide range of disciplines, including literature, philosophy, history, art, music, and languages. These fields focus on the study of human culture, creativity, and expression. One of the key attributes of Humanities is its emphasis on critical thinking and interpretation. Humanities scholars analyze texts, artworks, and historical events to uncover meaning and gain insights into the human condition.

Another important attribute of Humanities is its exploration of subjective experiences and emotions. Through literature, poetry, and art, Humanities delve into the complexities of human emotions, relationships, and societal issues. This field encourages empathy and understanding, fostering a deeper connection between individuals and their shared humanity.

Furthermore, Humanities provide a platform for cultural preservation and appreciation. By studying different cultures and their histories, Humanities help us recognize and celebrate diversity. This field also encourages interdisciplinary approaches, allowing scholars to draw connections between various disciplines and gain a holistic understanding of human society.

In summary, the Humanities offer critical thinking, exploration of subjective experiences, cultural preservation, and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Examining the Sciences

The Sciences, on the other hand, encompass disciplines such as physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics, and computer science. These fields focus on empirical evidence, experimentation, and the formulation of theories to explain natural phenomena. One of the key attributes of Science is its emphasis on objectivity and the pursuit of verifiable knowledge.

Science relies on the scientific method, a systematic approach to inquiry that involves observation, hypothesis formulation, experimentation, data analysis, and conclusion drawing. This method ensures that scientific findings are based on evidence and can be replicated by other researchers. The attribute of objectivity in Science allows for the development of theories and laws that form the foundation of our understanding of the natural world.

Another important attribute of Science is its focus on problem-solving and innovation. Scientific research aims to address real-world challenges and improve our lives. From medical advancements to technological innovations, Science has played a crucial role in shaping our modern society. This field encourages critical analysis, logical reasoning, and the application of knowledge to practical situations.

Furthermore, Science fosters collaboration and global cooperation. Scientists from different countries and backgrounds work together to tackle complex problems and share their findings. This attribute of Science promotes the exchange of ideas and the advancement of knowledge on a global scale.

In summary, the Sciences offer objectivity, problem-solving, innovation, and global collaboration.

Comparing Humanities and Science

While Humanities and Science may differ in their approaches and subject matters, they also share some common attributes. Both disciplines contribute to our understanding of the world and human experience, albeit through different lenses.

Firstly, both Humanities and Science require critical thinking skills. Whether it is analyzing a historical text or conducting a scientific experiment, both fields demand the ability to evaluate evidence, draw logical conclusions, and communicate findings effectively.

Secondly, both Humanities and Science rely on research methodologies. While Humanities may involve textual analysis and interpretation, Science employs empirical research, data collection, and experimentation. Both disciplines value rigorous investigation and the pursuit of knowledge.

Thirdly, both Humanities and Science contribute to societal progress. Humanities provide insights into human behavior, culture, and ethics, helping us navigate complex social issues. Science, on the other hand, drives technological advancements, medical breakthroughs, and environmental solutions that shape our future.

Lastly, both Humanities and Science encourage interdisciplinary approaches. Scholars and researchers often draw from multiple disciplines to gain a comprehensive understanding of complex phenomena. The integration of Humanities and Science can lead to innovative solutions and a more holistic understanding of the world.

In conclusion, Humanities and Science are distinct yet complementary fields of study. While Humanities focus on critical thinking, subjective experiences, cultural preservation, and interdisciplinary perspectives, Science emphasizes objectivity, problem-solving, innovation, and global collaboration. Despite their differences, both disciplines contribute to our understanding of the world and human experience. By recognizing and appreciating the attributes of Humanities and Science, we can foster a more holistic and well-rounded approach to knowledge and education.

Comparisons may contain inaccurate information about people, places, or facts. Please report any issues.

Ultimate Truths: Comparing Science and the Humanities

The Communications Forum at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Thursday, October 30, 2014

This Communications Forum special event will explore the differences and similarities in the kinds of knowledge available through inquiry in the sciences and humanities, and the ways that knowledge is obtained. The panelists will be historian, novelist, and columnist James Carroll ; philosopher and novelist Rebecca Goldstein ; author and physicist Alan Lightman ; and biologist Robert Weinberg . Seth Mnookin , Associate Director of the Forum, will moderate.

Thursday, October 30, 2014 7:00–9:00 pm 32–123 (Stata Center), MIT

James Carroll is a historian, novelist, and journalist. His works of nonfiction include An American Requiem , which won the National Book Award, and Constantine’s Sword , now an acclaimed documentary. Writing frequently about Catholicism in the modern world, Carroll has a prize-winning column in The Boston Globe . He is Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at Suffolk University in Boston.

Rebecca Newberger Goldstein is a philosopher and novelist and the author of ten books, including, most recently, 36 Arguments for the Existence of God: A Work of Fiction and Plato at the Googleplex: Why Philosophy Won’t Go Away . Goldstein is on the World Economic Forum’s Global Council of Values and was named Humanist of the Year by the American Humanist Association in 2011. She is the recipient of numerous awards for her scholarship and fiction, including a MacArthur Fellowship.

Alan Lightman is a physicist, novelist, and essayist. In astrophysics, he has made fundamental contributions to gravitation theory, the behavior of black holes, and radiation processes in extreme environments. His 1993 novel Einstein’s Dreams was an international bestseller, and in 2000, his book The Diagnosis was a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. He is currently Professor of the Practice of the Humanities at MIT and teaches in the Graduate Program in Science Writing.

Robert A. Weinberg is one of the world’s leading molecular biologists and the discoverer of the first gene known to cause cancer. His work focuses on the molecular and genetic mechanisms that lead to the formation of human tumors, and his recent work has examined how human cancer cells metastasize. In 1997, President Bill Clinton awarded him the National Medal of Science, the nation’s highest scientific honor. Weinberg is Professor of Biology at MIT and a founding member of the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research .

Seth Mnookin is Associate Director of the MIT Communications Forum and Acting Director of MIT’s Gradute Program in Science Writing . His most recent book, The Panic Virus: The True Story Behind the Vaccine-Autism Controversy , was published in 2011.

Video | Podcast

[This is an edited summary, and not a verbatim transcript.]

By Sarah Schwartz

Seth Mnookin , Associate Director of the Forum and the moderator for the evening, began by introducing the panelists. Mnookin explained that the evening’s discussion was the result of an exchange that took place during the Question and Answer portion of the Science in Fiction forum last spring. In April, panelist Alan Lightman and audience member Mary Fuller , Head of the Literature Section at MIT, began debating the differences between the sciences and the humanities.

Each panelist gave a brief opening statement. James Carroll began by describing the contributions of two medieval philosophers and theologians: the French logician Peter Abelard, who played a large part in initiating Christian humanism, and the Dominican friar and priest Thomas Aquinas, who would have found little meaning in the distinction between the sciences and the humanities. For Aquinas, Carroll said, “it was all knowledge.” Aquinas also believed that “not knowing” is an important form of knowledge — and that the purpose of knowing is love.

Alan Lightman spoke next. Both the sciences and the humanities seek understanding and truth, he said, but the truths they seek are distinct from one another. Scientific truth is external, while humanistic truth lies within human beings — who are by nature ambiguous.

While ambiguity is important to the humanities, scientists hate it, Lightman said. He added that scientific theory has a “right and wrongness” that the humanities lack; it is possible to attain repeatability while testing hypotheses in the sciences, but it is harder to do so in the humanities. Lightman concluded by saying that he was happy to live in a world with “both certainty and ambiguity” — the former reassures him while flying in airplanes engineered through careful study of aerodynamics and physics, while the latter makes conversations more subtle and engaging.

Rebecca Goldstein offered a definition of science as the “best means of telling us what is.” Science, she said, has developed a technique for getting nature to “answer us back” and correct our faulty intuitions. She defined the humanities as an “exploration of…inwardness,” an investigation of “an inner world of subjectivity” formed by memories, emotions, and intuitions. She noted that science requires philosophical arguments, but in her view, philosophy does not fit with the experimental sciences or the humanities. Goldstein views philosophy as “a technique that tries to maximize coherence.”

Robert Weinberg introduced himself as a “practitioner of basic science.” Biologists, he says, are “travel guides” for the last 3.5 billion years of Earth’s history. No law of physics preordained life on Earth. Instead, he affirmed, a series of contingencies has defined both the history of life and history as a subject in the humanities. He noted that the extinction of the dinosaurs, the evolution of bipedal humans, and the destruction of the Temple of Jerusalem in 70 AD were all “historical accidents.”

Mnookin then asked Lightman if he viewed the social sciences as part of the sciences, and the arts as part of the “traditional” humanities. Lightman responded that he didn’t think it was appropriate to “lump all social sciences together.” Some are more like the physical sciences and some are more like the humanities; he cited economics as an example of a social science that can itself range from mathematical to sociological in nature. Goldstein added that there are “different approaches in the physical sciences as well,” noting that experimental and theoretical physicists would operate in different ways. But she considers the social sciences to be sciences, she said, because they involve tests that aim to correct our intuitions.

Here, Carroll wondered if distinguishing the sciences from the humanities was a “destructive dichotomy.” It would be better, he suggested, to remove the distinction and view “knowledge” as a single category. We all attain knowledge in the same way, Carroll argued: we create models, whether they are experiments, images, or narratives. “Intellect is a function of the imagination,” Carroll said. When the two are viewed separately, artists are expected to exist in a realm driven by feeling, not discipline; the “soft” humanities can be denigrated by comparison to the more “rigorous” hard sciences.

Mnookin recalled Lightman’s comment that scientists dislike ambiguity, and asked how Weinberg felt about ambiguity in his scientific results. Weinberg agreed that scientists hate ambiguity. Regardless of the profundity of the result, he said, they want to know that their results are not dependent upon human interpretation. He added that scientists want results that will “stand the test of time” and still be true in thirty years. Mnookin asked if this limited the questions that scientists are willing to tackle. Both Weinberg and Lightman said yes. If someone in his laboratory proposes an experiment, Weinberg explained, he asks that scientist to define what unambiguous results they will receive. Might some important questions be overlooked, Mnookin asked, because certain steps of their answers involved ambiguity? Weinberg said this was possible.

Goldstein said that she finds a lot of ambiguity among scientists’ descriptions of what they are doing while they do science; addressing this, she said, requires philosophy. Referring to twentieth century philosopher of science Karl Popper , Goldstein noted that some scientists have a Popperian view that science aims to falsify; this means that nothing will stand up to the test of time. Lightman agreed that the explanation of what a scientist is doing is not science, but philosophy; “the thing that he did is science.” Carroll reasserted that he found a distinction between those who ask “what is?” and those who ask “what does it mean?” problematic and even “inhuman.”

The panelists then briefly debated the issue of perception versus reality in the sciences. Weinberg said he prefers to distance himself from subjectivity. He believes that an objective reality exists: maps of the world or diagrams of cells are real, and not just “artifacts of our perception.” Carroll asked why one’s subjective perception could not be a reality, arguing that knowledge requires a conditional “knower.” Weinberg replied that one pretension of science is that if a Martian landed on Earth, it would “converge on the same set of conclusions” that humans have, even if its brain operated in a completely different way. If this is true, he said, the intervention of the human mind becomes a “historical artifact” rather than “an important constituent” of reality.

Mnookin asked Lightman if he experienced a similar creative drive in both physics and fiction. Lightman said that the “creative moment” feels exactly the same in both endeavors. In physics, he said, it is the experience of struggling with a problem, of having a sudden shift in perspective, and then seeing the solution. In that moment, “you’re totally free of your ego…it’s a very beautiful experience.” The same thing happens, he said, while writing fiction . But to have this experience in any discipline, Lightman asserted, “you have to have a prepared mind”: you have to know the tools of the trade and where the frontiers lie in the field.

The Q and A session began with Mary Fuller. Fuller said she felt some terms in the discussion had not been defined well; for example, she felt that “ambiguity” was being used to mean “vagueness,” but from her perspective, ambiguity refers to multiple values being possible simultaneously. She also argued that there are disciplines that fall between the sciences and the humanities, like cosmology, which is scientific but studies unrepeatable phenomena. Even the humanities attempt to describe “what is,” she said, with a focus on aesthetic objects.

Goldstein agreed that there is an “intentional” and “cultivated” ambiguity in creating art, which allows others to engage it subjectively. Mnookin wondered if the humanities could be described as an interpretive discipline, while the sciences were an empirical discipline.

Chris Peterson , a research affiliate at the MIT Center for Civic Media, asked if the panelists could offer a definition of the humanities, specifically the human character. Are the humanities defined by ambiguity and unpredictability? Before people understood the science of non-human actors like the sun or sea, they assigned these entities human agency, he said, so “is human just another word for what science cannot yet predict?”

Embedded in this question, Carroll said, is “what is a human being?” Carroll answered that a human being is “an image-making creature,” and that science is itself a process of image-making. This process is always ambiguous because “an image is never identical with the thing it images.” Weinberg replied that the humanities are about the human mind and soul, while science is about the objective outside world. Goldstein added that the humanities study “what it’s like to be human.”

Chris Meyer , an entrepreneur, noted that the scientific method has made it easy to design laboratories for the sciences; is it more challenging to study the humanities, he asked, because there are no laboratories designed for humanistic study?

Mnookin asked if this question might bring up moral issues of human research. Weinberg responded that, humane or inhumane, experiments on people are flawed because the human mind is too complex. In the future, he said, we might be able to more precisely address the “independent variables of the human mind,” but we can’t at this time. He doubted that the human mind could ever be reduced to predictable processes, even with better tools. Goldstein said that certain sciences have led to discoveries in the humanities — for example, evolutionary psychology studies issues of moral evolution — but people in the humanities have resisted this.

Joseph Seering , a researcher at MIT, brought up the relationship between the academy and activism, especially in emerging fields of sociology. He wondered if this had to do with different understandings of the nature of objectivity.

It depends on whether activism is driven by pre-existing perceptions or objective analysis, Weinberg said. Activism tends to be tainted by the idea that activists arrive at the solution with “ideological baggage.” Goldstein replied that global warming has prompted scientific activism founded on objectivity.

David Rush , a retired professor from Tufts, said he had experienced Lightman’s “sense of revelation” in science. He also addressed Weinberg’s description of how research questions are chosen. Rush noted that many research questions with obvious answers are studied over and over again. Weinberg replied that the greatest challenge in training young scientists is to teach them how to identify what is interesting and consequential, as opposed to trivial data gathering.

Daniel Gross , a journalist, asked about the differences in transmission of knowledge between the sciences and the humanities. How does what we learned from Shakespeare compare to what we learned from Darwin?

Goldstein said that while we can study Shakespeare’s techniques, this type of literary art gives rise to various subjective experiences in different readers. When we read Newton or Euclid, however, it is clear what the author was saying. Mnookin argued that two people could have different takes on The Origin of the Species ; Weinberg countered that Darwin’s conclusions have one salient, objective point. Mnookin and Lightman agreed that it was possible to have subjective literary experiences while reading Darwin’s work.

Josh Cowls , a research assistant at the Oxford Internet Institute, was curious about the difference between what we look for and what we find in science. He asked if the scientific method was invented or discovered.

Weinberg said that what scientists find is “a subset” of what can be found, dictated by what we look for — which is shaped by our culture. But the answers themselves should be robust, regardless. Lightman said that the scientific method was discovered over time through a process of “intellectual natural selection.” This method has allowed us to ask meaningful questions of nature that have, in turn, improved our quality of life. Goldstein mentioned David Deutsch : he argues, she said, that any intelligent being in the universe would eventually come to use our scientific method.

Another speaker said that he has found the process of science to be “much closer to a novel than…a controlled experiment.” He asked if we’ve made a “plaster saint” of science by ignoring its messy personal and political sides.

Weinberg said that “the trouble with science is…it’s done by human beings.” The main question, he said, is whether or not the end results are robust, regardless of the messy processes or “egomaniacs” that found them.

Gary Lundsky, a MIT undergraduate studying physics, asked if both the humanities and the sciences make objective progress.

Goldstein replied that philosophy makes progress as its arguments expand coherence, and as the science it studies progresses. She said that philosophy has helped us make moral progress: for example, expanding Plato’s argument against slavery for the Greeks to a universal argument against slavery.

Josh Sokol , a student in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing, asked if there was a way to define science separately from the nature of reality, as a set of heuristics that “works because it works.” Furthermore, can a similar sort of definition apply to the humanities as a useful method of studying humans?

Lightman said that discussions about the definition of reality are not scientific. He agreed that science “works because it works,” and said that further characterizations become philosophical. Goldstein asked if Lightman would say that we know fermions or genes exist. Lightman responded that our theories of these scientific entities allow us to predict the outside world, but whether or not they expand our ontology is another discipline.

Mnookin asked Carroll a final question: did he see progress in the history of novels? Carroll said that progress itself is an ambiguous, if useful, idea. He added that the basic idea of the scientific method, in his opinion, is “experience trumps dogma,” something that is the subject of most novels as well. But we cannot abstract from politics, he argued, because the Enlightenment itself was a political revolution, which promoted the power of individuals and the “free play of the mind.” This, Carroll argued, is the basis of both science and contemporary literary art.

Written by CommForum

The official website of the MIT Communications Forum

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Writing in the Sciences vs. Writing in the Humanities

By stephanie lehner and caitlin doughton.

As Biology and Philosophy double majors in SJLA, we have gained experience writing both scientific and humanity-based papers; however, we recognize that transitioning between the two often can be difficult. We would like to provide a guide on how to tackle this task. While it is true that the two writing styles vastly differ in some regards, they also share similarities! As in all writing, it is important to have a clear purpose, and thus, pick a specific topic to discuss. For example, rather than writing about Plato’s Symposium in its entirety, the specific topic of Eros (Love) in the Symposium can be analyzed. Similarly, rather than writing about cells in general, the specific topic of embryonic stem cells can be researched.

When writing scientifically, it is important to have succinct sentences and strong verbs that convey the topic at hand. Although long and flowy sentences may sound better from the writer’s perspective, such a structure may force readers to analyze each sentence multiple times before they grasp the true meaning! Therefore, it is essential that sentences only include information that is necessary for properly interpreting the topic. Including and referencing experimental and statistical data also improves a scientific paper, for readers can better understand a topic when evidence is provided. In scientific writing, a certain format is often followed: abstract, introduction, methods, results, and discussion. This outline allows for a smooth progression of thoughts, moving from general information about the topic to specific information about data. It is also vital to conduct research on other literature regarding the topic at hand to provide background knowledge. Doing so will increase the paper’s credibility if similar results have been obtained in other experiments. We find PubMed, Google Scholar, and Science Direct to be useful websites for obtaining peer-reviewed articles and would recommend them as a strong starting point.

Conversely, when writing in the humanities, students often have more creative liberty and can use a variety of adjectives and adverbs to convey imagery. Yet, students should also be cognizant of speaking succinctly because the inclusion of “fluffy” words or sentences detract from a paper’s purpose. Although humanities papers often display more linguistic creativity than scientific papers, it is important to recognize the fine line between words that add to versus words that take away from the paper’s message. In the humanities, a specific structure is generally utilized when writing papers: introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion. Just as the abstract summarizes a scientific paper, an introduction gives insight into a humanity paper’s central discussion. Thus, it is vital that papers have strong thesis statements, so readers have a clear direction. In fact, a thesis statement may cause readers to decide if they do or do not wish to continue reading your piece! Lastly, resources, such as the library’s database and collection of books, along with Google Scholar, are helpful for humanities papers. We also find Purdue’s OWL’s Sample Papers to be an extremely helpful resource for better understanding how to properly format a paper.

As always, it is important not to worry oneself when writing a paper or to overthink when starting the writing process. We always find it helpful to write down preliminary ideas and goals for a paper in the format of an outline. Doing so allows us to have a clear focus regarding the paper’s topic and helps the writing process to go much more smoothly. At The Writing Center, we have benefitted from making appointments with other writing consultants to help with our own papers. As such, we understand the importance of helping other people with their writing too. If you are ever having trouble starting, working on, or finishing a paper, The Writing Center has numerous resources to help!

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August 10, 2012

Humanities aren't a science. Stop treating them like one.

By Maria Konnikova

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American

There’s a certain allure to the elegance of mathematics, the precision of the hard sciences. That much is undeniable. But does the appeal mean that quantitative approaches are always germane? Hardly—and I doubt anyone would argue the contrary. Yet, over and over, with alarming frequency, researchers and scholars have felt the need to take clear-cut, scientific-seeming approaches to disciplines that have, until recent memory, been far from any notions of precise quantifiability. And the trend is an alarming one.

Take, for instance, a recent paper that draws conclusions about the relative likelihood that certain stories are originally based in real-world events by looking at the (very complicated) mathematics of social networks. The researchers first model what the properties of real social networks look like. They then apply that model to certain texts ( Beowulf, the Iliad, and Táin Bó Cuailnge , on the mythological end, and Les Misérables, Richard III, the Fellowship of the Ring , and Harry Potter on the fictional end) to see how much the internal social networks of the characters resemble those that exist in real life. And then, based on that resemblance, they conclude which narratives are more likely to have originated in actual history: to wit, Beowulf and the Iliad are more likely reality-based than Shakespeare or Tolkien or—gasp—even that most real-life-like of narratives, Harry Potter . ( Táin , on the other hand, isn’t very lifelike at all—but if you remove the six central characters, which you can totally do since they are likely amalgams of real ones, it, too, starts looking historical.)

But what is the analysis really doing? And more pressingly: what is the point? Is such work really a good use of scholarly resources (and British tax dollars, as the university that’s home to the study is publicly funded)?

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I’m skeptical of this kind of approach—and not at all sure that it adds anything to our understanding of, well, anything. What is it really capturing, for one? A social network isn’t just an immutable thing. Consider what external factors might be involved in determining what an actual social network—and a literary one especially—might look like at any given point: the culture within which each work was created, the writing and storytelling conventions of the time, whether the work is single or multi-authored in reality, a part of oral lore or written on the spot. The list goes on and on. You can’t compare the networks of War and Peace and The Corrections , though both are weighty works of literary fiction, to see if one is more “real” than the other. Literary conventions changes. Genre conventions change. Societal conventions change. And is today’s real-world social network really comparable on any number of levels to one, say, a thousand, or even five or one hundred years ago?

I don’t mean to pick on this single paper. It’s simply a timely illustration of a far deeper trend, a tendency that is strong in almost all humanities and social sciences, from literature to psychology, history to political science. Every softer discipline these days seems to feel inadequate unless it becomes harder , more quantifiable , more scientific , more precise . That, it seems, would confer some sort of missing legitimacy in our computerized, digitized, number-happy world. But does it really? Or is it actually undermining the very heart of each discipline that falls into the trap of data, numbers, statistics, and charts? Because here’s the truth: most of these disciplines aren’t quantifiable, scientific, or precise. They are messy and complicated. And when you try to straighten out the tangle, you may find that you lose far more than you gain.

It’s one of the things that irked me about political science and that irks me about psychology—the reliance, insistence, even, on increasingly fancy statistics and data sets to prove any given point, whether it lends itself to that kind of proof or not. I’m not alone in thinking that such a blanket approach ruins the basic nature of the inquiry. Just consider this review of Jerome Kagan’s new book, Psychology’s Ghosts, by the social psychologist Carol Tavris. “Many researchers fail to consider that their measurements of brains, behavior and self-reported experience are profoundly influenced by their subjects' culture, class and experience, as well as by the situation in which the research is conducted,” Tavris writes. “This is not a new concern, but it takes on a special urgency in this era of high-tech inspired biological reductionism.” The tools of hard science have a part to play, but they are far from the whole story. Forget the qualitative, unquantifiable and irreducible elements, and you are left with so much junk.

Kagan himself analyzes the problem in the context of developmental psychology:

An adolescent's feeling of shame because a parent is uneducated, unemployed, and alcoholic cannot be translated into words or phrases that name only the properties of genes, proteins, neurons, neurotransmitters, hormones, receptors, and circuits without losing a substantial amount of meaning.

Sometimes, there is no easy approach to studying the intricate vagaries that are the human mind and human behavior. Sometimes, we have to be okay with qualitative questions and approaches that, while reliable and valid and experimentally sound, do not lend themselves to an easy linear narrative—or a narrative that has a base in hard science or concrete math and statistics. Psychology is not a natural science. It’s a social science. And it shouldn’t try to be what it’s not.

Literature, psychology, and the list of culprits continues still. In a recent column for the New York Times , Richard Polt expresses the same cynicism with respect to human morality. “Any understanding of human good and evil,” he writes, “has to deal with phenomena that biology ignores or tries to explain away — such as decency, self-respect, integrity, honor, loyalty or justice.” And yet how often do researchers try to focus on biology, the “real” stuff, at the expense of all those other, intangible and difficult to parse phenomena? How do you even begin to quantify or science-ify those, try as you may?

Even linguistic analysis, an area that is less contentious, is fraught with difficulties. Witness the debate in a recent New Yorker article on linguistics in forensics: for every expert who tells you that models and statistical analyses can tell you something specific is one who makes a persuasive counter case—and both have facts and examples from history aplenty to back up their claims. It’s hard to quantify and to have precise conclusions when you deal with qualitative phenomena—but the temptation to do so remains.

Nowhere is that temptation more evident than in history, where quantification and precise explanation is so incredibly enticing—and so politically useful. Witness the rise of Cliodynamics (no apologies to Clio, from whom it takes its name; I don’t think the muse would be overly thrilled): the use of scientific methodology (nonlinear mathematics, computer simulations, large-N statistical analyses, information technologies) to illuminate historical events – and, presumably, be able to predict when future “cycles” will occur.

Sure, there might be some insights gained. Economist Herbert Gintis calls the benefit analogous to an airplane’s black box: you can’t predict future plane crashes, but at least you can analyze what went wrong in the past. But when it comes to historical events—not nearly as defined or tangible or precise as a plane crash—so many things can easily prevent even that benefit from being realized.

To be of equal use, each quantitative analysis must rely on comparable data – but historical records are spotty and available proxies differ from event to event, issues that don’t plague something like a plane crash. What’s more, each conclusion, each analysis, each input and output must be justified and qualified (same root as qualitative; coincidence?) by a historian who knows— really knows —what he’s doing. But can't you just see the models taking on a life of their own, being used to make political statements and flashy headlines? It's happened before. Time and time again. And what does history do, according to the cliodynamists, if not repeat itself?

It’s tempting to want things to be nice and neat. To rely on an important-seeming analysis instead of drowning in the quagmire of nuance and incomplete information. To think black and white instead of grey. But at the end, no matter how meticulous you’ve been, history is not a hard science. Nor is literature. Or political science. Or ethics. Or linguistics. Or psychology. Or any other number of disciplines. They don’t care about your highly involved quantitative analysis. They behave by their own rules. And you know what? Whether you agree with me or not, what you think—and what I think—matters not a jot to them.

It’s tempting to think linearly and in easily graspable chunks. It would make things a whole lot easier and more manageable if everything came down to hard facts. Yes, we could say, we can predict this and avert that and explain this and understand that. But you know what? The cliodynamists, just like everyone else, will only know which cyclical predictions were accurate after the fact. Forgotten will be all of those that were totally wrong. And the analysts of myths only wait for the hits to make their point—but how many narratives that are obviously not based in reality have similar patterns? And whose reality are we dealing with, anyway? We’re not living in Isaac Asimov’s Foundation , with its psychohistorical trends and aspirations—as much as it would be easier if we were.

We’re held back by those biases that plague almost all attempts to quantify the qualitative, selection on the dependent variable and post hoc hypotheses and explanations. We look at instances where the effect exists and posit a cause—and forget all the times the exact same cause led to no visible effect, or to an effect that was altogether different. It’s so easy to tell stories based on models. It’s so hard to remember that they are nothing more than stories. (It’s not just history or literature. Much of fMRI research is blamed for precisely that reason: if you don’t have an a priori hypothesis but then see something interesting, it’s all too tempting to explain its involvement after the fact and pretend that that’s what you’d meant to do all along. But the two approaches are not one and the same.)

I’m all for cross-disciplinary work. But this is something else.

When we relegate the humanities to a bunch of trends and statistics and frequencies, we get exactly that disconcerting and incongruous dystopia of Italo Calvino’s If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler : books that have been reduced to nothing but words frequencies and trends, that tell you all you need to know about the work without your ever having to read it—and machines that then churn out future fake (or are they real?) books that have nothing to do with their supposed author. It’s a chilling thought.

The tools of mathematical and statistical and scientific analysis are invaluable. But their quantifiable certainty is all too easy to see as the only “real” way of doing things when really, it is but one tool and one approach—and not one that is translatable or applicable to all matters of qualitative phenomena. That's one basic fact we'd do well not to forget.

Pádraig Mac Carron, & Ralph Kenna (2012). Universal Properties of Mythological Networks EPL 99 (2012) 28002 arXiv: 1205.4324v2

Spinney L (2012). Human cycles: History as science. Nature, 488 (7409), 24-6 PMID: 22859185

Elesapiens' Blog

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Science vs. Humanities: Educating citizens of the future

We are living exciting times where knowledge flows and gets shared like never before. We are flooded everyday with awesome technological scientific novelties that are almost immediately incorporated to our lives.

Science is no longer the exclusive domain of scientists and is more present than ever in our day to day.

Technological development is dizzying and its impact on human development is giving rise to an increasing need for changes in educational models.

The needs have changed and this implies that the educational methods and contents should change according to the new demands of society. Many of the skills and competencies that an education from the XXI century requires are very different to those currently taught in most of the schools worldwide.

In many countries there are signals showing the beginning of a change or, at least, an attempt to introduce new methods. Changes in curriculum contents and the incorporation of tools and methods related to new technologies and to the information society.

During this unfolding process there are many who defend the need to educate “citizens of the future”, who will be able to work in jobs that we do not even imagine yet, solving problems that are nonexistent nowadays. Many who believe in training useful citizens for a future society totally unknown to us.

But… Are we addressing this educational revolution in a right way? I cannot help but wonder if we are not making the same mistakes we made in the past. Because… yes, we live in the knowledge society, but… what sort of knowledge?

Educational models from many countries are increasingly taking a side for Science subjects versus the rest

from the Elementary school, seeking to respond to the growing need of professionals with a technical background, one of the current keys to improving the economic competitiveness of a country. These are the subjects that are known as STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. No doubt, what are at stake are the demands of an increasingly technological society where the development of robotics, biotechnology, computing and big data is one step to take for the most competitive economies. And to meet this, technicians, engineers, programmers, doctors, biologists, mathematicians, scientists… (clearly technical profiles) are surely required.

But what implications can it have to promote an education based on science subjects rather than on subjects related to the humanities?

Definitely an education where contents related to literature, art, philosophy, history, social sciences, etc. have a secondary role, does not only mean taking a risk of cultural loss, but also means training individuals with a lack of vision of the ultimate goal which gives meaning to many of the problems Science faces continuously.

To the concrete, the specific, the accurate, the absolute, the empirical facts that Science entails, we must not oppose but add the global, social, relative and even randomized vision of Humanities.

This antagonistic concept of science and humanities was presented by Charles Percy Snow in 1959 during his lecture “The Two Cultures”, in which he referred to the lack of understanding and communication between the scientific community and humanistic as one of the drawbacks to solving the big problems of the world.

Today, in a more technological society than ever, it seems essential to overcome this barrier between the two cultures (scientific and humanistic) and propose an education that integrates both branches of knowledge.

Creativity, self-improvement, analytical skills, effectiveness in problem solving, research, discussion, reflection, collaboration, empathy skills … are not dependent solely on scientific knowledge, but rather on the ability of individuals to relate seemingly unrelated concepts and ideas, the ability to develop a global vision of problems and to properly define the objectives and methods of coping with it, on having a mindset to understand different realities and arguments other than their own, on the skills to apply principles of moderation and / or firmness (assertiveness) in defense of their ideas and in their relationship with others…

The purpose of education should not be just to train individuals to be highly productive for society. In our opinion, the purpose of education is to educate people in the ability of managing their lives in a healthy way, both from a physical and mental point of view, to allow them to achieve their own personal goals and those of the society in which they work and live.

Science has allowed humans to articulate and organize the knowledge in a coherent, orderly and demonstrable way that helps them explain and understand their environment and their own existence, to successfully face the challenges that allow them to live longer and better. Science, in its original concept, is at the service of humanities.

The values and ethical principles of a society are shaped by history, philosophy, art, language, literature … and of course by science , and its study is very important to get to know ourselves as individuals and as a society. Humanities empowers individuals with a more plural, more alternative, more inaccurate and wider knowledge which helps us develop skills that allow us to empathize with other human beings and let us have a more global and pluralistic view of the problems we have to face both in our lives and work.

In Classical Greece philosophy was seen as the mother of all sciences, namely as an integral subject covering all branches of knowledge, which helped have a comprehensive understanding of the world. And this global vision, more humanistic, along with the more specific capabilities and methodical characteristics of the scientific profiles is what allows us to face with the best guarantees of success the great problems of our time.

Competitiveness is important in the progress of our society, but not at any price. Not at the expense of cultural loss which certainly precedes economic and social impoverishment.

We need, as well as technological progress, individuals with a strong background in values and with enough vision to meet new challenges in a sustainable away, people responsible with other human beings and with their environment.

And this is fundamentally a science education, a STEM education, but certainly combined with humanities subjects to strengthen education in values, critical thinking and a global perspective of our challenges.

Education is facing new and unknown challenges. Nobody has a crystal ball, but the vision and the ability to balance correctly sciences and humanities in education, in the curriculum and new content and materials, is one of the main keys to face with the best guarantees of success the future of human being.

We live and celebrate the knowledge society! But … how do we want this society to be in the coming years?

• ← Homage to Female Teachers
• Memoirs of a Teacher →

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Subscribing to the Free Subscription Plan entails the express acknowledgement and acceptance of the content access conditions of said plan by the user.

AVISO LEGAL Y FINALIDAD DE LA PÁGINA WEB

En cumplimiento del artículo 10 de la Ley 34/2002, de 11 de julio, de Servicios de la Sociedad de la Información y Comercio Electrónico (LSSICE) se detallan los datos identificativos de la entidad

ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN, S.L., con C.I.F. B-86432101 y domicilio social en c/ c/ Orense 20, 2-10, 28020, Madrid. España, inscrita en el Registro Mercantil de Madrid el 24 de abril de 2.012, en el Tomo 29.859, folio 143, hoja número M-537264, inscripción 1ª, es una empresa dedicada a producir y comercializar productos educativos y de entretenimiento digitales. A través de este aviso legal se pretende regular el acceso y uso, y en general, la relación entre este sitio web, accesible en la dirección de Internet http://www. elesapiens.com , y los usuarios del sitio web.

CONDICIONES GENERALES DE USO DEL SITIO WEB

Las Condiciones Generales regulan el uso del sitio web de ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN, S.L., con C.I.F. B-86432101 y domicilio social en c/ Orense 20, 2-10, 28020, Madrid, España, inscrita en el Registro Mercantil de Madrid el 24 de abril de 2.012, en el Tomo 29.859, folio 143, hoja número M-537264, inscripción 1ª, al que se accede mediante la dirección http://www.elesapiens.com .

La existencia de las presentes Condiciones Generales de Uso no excluye la presencia de otras disposiciones o condiciones de acceso a las diversas secciones que componen el sitio de ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN, S.L.

Dentro de la expresión “sitio o sitio web” se comprenden -con carácter delimitativo, pero no limitativo- los datos, textos, gráficos, imágenes, animaciones, creaciones musicales, vídeos, sonidos, dibujos, fotografías y otros incluidos en el mismo, y, en general, todas las creaciones expresadas por cualquier medio o soporte, tangible o intangible con independencia de que sean susceptibles o no de propiedad intelectual de acuerdo al Texto Refundido de la Ley de Propiedad Intelectual. Asimismo, también se entenderán incluidos en este sitio web todos los microsites a los que se pueda acceder desde el presente sitio web, excepto que dicho microsite, expresamente recoja unas condiciones de uso propias, en cuyo caso se le aplicarán éstas.

El uso del sitio web de ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN, S.L, implica el conocimiento y plena aceptación de las advertencias legales y condiciones vigentes en cada momento en que el usuario acceda al mismo y que a continuación se especifican.

Asimismo, la utilización de determinados servicios a disposición de los usuarios de este sitio oficial puede estar sometida a condiciones especiales, advertencias o instrucciones que también deberán ser consultadas y aceptadas sin reservas por aquellos.

El usuario visitante es consciente de que el acceso y utilización de los servicios y contenidos del sitio se realiza bajo su única y exclusiva responsabilidad.

El usuario utilizará los servicios y contenidos exclusivamente para fines particulares con exclusión de cualquier modalidad de utilización posterior de los mismos con ánimo de lucro o reporte de algún beneficio, directo o indirecto.

En caso de que el usuario no acepte estas condiciones generales o, las condiciones particulares que regulen el uso de un determinado servicio y/o contenido destinado a los usuarios del sitio web y que dicha entidad determine, el usuario deberá abstenerse de acceder al sitio web o en su caso abandonarlo.

Con carácter general los servicios y contenidos ofrecidos a través del sitio web estarán disponibles en español e inglés, sin perjuicio de la posibilidad que se reserva ELESAPIENS de ofrecer los mismos en otros idiomas oficiales.

ELESAPIENS podrá modificar de forma unilateral y sin aviso previo, la prestación, configuración, contenido y servicios del sitio, así como sus condiciones de uso y el acceso a los contenidos ofrecidos y servicios prestados.

Derechos y obligaciones del usuario

El usuario podrá:

• Acceder de forma gratuita y sin necesidad de autorización previa a los contenidos y servicios del sitio disponibles como tales, sin perjuicio de las condiciones técnicas, particulares o la necesidad del previo registro respecto de servicios y contenidos específicos según se determine en estas condiciones generales o en las condiciones particulares de dichos servicios.
• Utilizar los servicios y contenidos disponibles para su uso exclusivamente particular.
• Hacer un uso correcto y lícito del sitio, de conformidad con la legislación vigente, la moral, las buenas costumbres y el orden público.

Si solicitamos información de registro al usuario, este deberá ofrecernos una información verdadera, precisa, actual y completa. Deberá actualizar a tiempo su información de registro para mantenerla exacta, actual y completa. Si se le envía una contraseña, no debe revelarla a nadie más. El usuario no usará contraseñas de otras personas, siendo responsable de mantener la confidencialidad de sus cuentas y contraseñas. El usuario acepta notificarnos inmediatamente sobre cualquier uso no autorizado de sus contraseñas, cuentas o cualquier otra infracción de seguridad. También acepta cerrar la sesión de sus cuentas a final de cada sesión. No seremos responsables de cualquier pérdida o daño originado por su incumplimiento de estos requisitos.

El usuario no podrá realizar cualquier acción que suponga la reproducción, distribución, copia, alquiler, comunicación pública, transformación o cualquier otra acción similar que suponga la modificación o alteración, de todo o parte de los contenidos y servicios del sitio o la explotación económica de los mismos, sin la autorización previa y por escrito de ELESAPIENS o de terceros propietarios de los derechos de propiedad intelectual e industrial que recaigan sobre los servicios o contenidos del sitio web y a salvo de lo dispuesto en estas condiciones generales o, en su caso, condiciones particulares que regulen el uso de un servicio y/o contenido existente en el sitio web.

Sin limitar lo dicho anteriormente, el usuario se compromete a no usar nuestra página para hacer lo siguiente:

• Utilizar la marca, nombres comerciales, así como cualquier otro signo identificativo que se encuentre sujeto a derechos de propiedad intelectual o industrial, sin la previa autorización expresa y por escrito de su propietario.
• Utilizar los servicios y contenidos ofrecidos a través del sitio de forma contraria a las condiciones generales de uso y/o las condiciones particulares que regulen el uso de un determinado servicio y/o contenido, y en perjuicio o con menoscabo de los derechos del resto de usuarios.
• Difamar, insultar, acosar, perseguir, amenazar o de otra manera violar los derechos legales de otras personas;
• Publicar, exponer, subir, enviar por correo electrónico, distribuir o divulgar (colectivamente, “Transmitir”) cualquier contenido no apropiado, profano, difamatorio, obsceno, indecente o ilegal;
• Enviar archivos que contienen virus, archivos dañados o cualquier otro software similar, o programas que pueden dañar o afectar de una manera negativa el funcionamiento del ordenador de otra persona, página web, cualquier software o hardware, u otro equipo.
• Enviar encuestas, concursos, sistemas piramidales, correo no deseado, anuncios no solicitados, materiales de promoción o cadenas de mensajes;
• Descargar cualquier archivo que el usuario sabe o razonablemente debe saber que no se puede obtener legalmente de tal manera;
• Falsificar o eliminar cualquier atributo de autor, avisos legales o designaciones propietarias, etiquetas de origen, código fuente de software u otro material;
• Restringir o prohibir a cualquier usuario usar y disfrutar de cualquier área pública dentro de nuestra página web;
• Entrometerse en nuestra página web o trastornarla;
• Falsificar encabezados o manipular identificadores u otros datos para ocultar el origen de cualquier contenido transmitido a través de nuestra página web o manipular su presencia en nuestra página web.
• Realizar cualquier acción que resulta ser causa de una carga excesiva o desproporcionadamente larga de nuestro servidor o equipos;
• Eliminar o modificar de cualquier modo los dispositivos de protección o identificación de ELESAPIENS o sus legítimos titulares que puedan contener los contenidos alojados en el sitio web, o los símbolos que ELESAPIENS o los terceros legítimos titulares de los derechos incorporen a sus creaciones objeto de propiedad intelectual o industrial existentes en este sitio web.
• Reproducir total o parcialmente el presente sitio web en otro sitio web distinto; no podrá realizar enmarcados al presente sitio o los sitios web accesibles a través del mismo que oculten o modifiquen con carácter delimitativo, pero no limitativo- contenidos, espacios publicitarios y marcas de ELESAPIENS o de terceros, con independencia o no de que supongan actos de competencia desleal o de confusió
• Estar involucrado en actividades ilegales.

Usted acepta la condición de usar nuestros foros, comunidad y/o servicios de comunicación o mensajería (conjuntamente, los “Foros) sólo para enviar y recibir mensajes e información adecuada y relacionada con un Foro particular.

Si selecciona un nombre de usuario que, según nuestra opinión, es obsceno, indecente, insultante o que puede ser la causa de descrédito o desdén público, reservamos el derecho de cambiar automáticamente su nombre de usuario sin notificación previa, eliminar sus publicaciones en nuestras páginas web, prohibirle el acceso a la página web o cualquier combinación de estas opciones.

La utilización del sitio oficial deberá obedecer al contenido de estas Condiciones Generales, y a cualesquiera disposiciones legales aplicables.

ELESAPIENS se reserva el derecho unilateral de denegar el acceso a este sitio web a aquellos usuarios que incumplan las presentes Condiciones Generales de Uso.

Derechos y obligaciones de ELESAPIENS

ELESAPIENS se reserva los siguientes derechos:

• Modificar las condiciones de acceso al sitio, técnicas o no, de forma unilateral y sin preaviso a los usuarios, sin perjuicio de lo dispuesto en las condiciones particulares que regulen el uso de un determinado servicio y/o contenido destinado a los usuarios del sitio web.
• Establecer condiciones particulares y, en su caso, la exigencia de un precio u otros requisitos para el acceso a determinados servicios y/o contenidos.
• Limitar, excluir o condicionar el acceso de los usuarios cuando no se den todas las garantías de utilización correcta del sitio por los mismos conforme a las obligaciones y prohibiciones asumidas por los mismos.
• Finalizar la prestación de un servicio o suministro de un contenido, sin derecho a indemnización, cuando su utilización por los usuarios devenga ilícito o contrario a lo establecido en las condiciones que lo regulan, sin perjuicio de lo dispuesto en las condiciones particulares que regulen el uso de un determinado servicio y/o contenido destinado a los usuarios del sitio web.
• Modificar, suprimir o actualizar todo o parte de los contenidos o servicios ofrecidos a través del sitio, sin necesidad de preaviso, sin perjuicio de lo dispuesto en las condiciones particulares que regulen el uso de un determinado servicio y/o contenido destinado a los usuarios del sitio web.
• Emprender cualquier acción legal o judicial que resulte conveniente para la protección de los derechos de ELESAPIENS como de terceros que presten sus servicios o contenidos a través del sitio, siempre que resulte procedente.
• Exigir la indemnización que pudiera derivar por el uso indebido o ilícito de todo o parte de los servicios y contenidos prestados a través del sitio.

Exención y limitación de responsabilidad de ELESAPIENS

ELESAPIENS S.L queda exenta de cualquier tipo de responsabilidad por daños y perjuicios de toda naturaleza en los siguientes casos:

• Por la imposibilidad o dificultades de conexión a la red de comunicaciones a través de la que resulta accesible este sitio web, independientemente de la clase de conexión utilizada por el usuario.
• Por la interrupción, suspensión o cancelación del acceso al sitio web, así como por disponibilidad y continuidad del funcionamiento del sitio o de los servicios y/o contenidos en el mismo, cuando ello se deba (i) bien a interrupción del servicio por mantenimiento técnico de la web, (ii) bien a una causa ajena al ámbito de control de ELESAPIENS ya provenga directa o indirectamente de ésta.
• ELESAPIENS no asume ninguna responsabilidad respecto de los servicios y contenidos, ni por la disponibilidad y condiciones, técnicas o no, de acceso a los mismos, que sean ofrecidos por terceros prestadores de servicios, en especial respecto de los prestadores de servicios de la sociedad de la información. Por prestadores de servicios de la sociedad de la información se entenderán aquellas personas físicas o jurídicas que presten los siguientes servicios al público: (i) transmisión por una red de comunicación de datos facilitados por el destinatario del servicio (ii) servicios de acceso a la citada red (iii) Servicios de almacenamiento o alojamiento de datos (iv) suministro de contenidos o información (v) servicio de copia temporal de los datos solicitados por los usuarios (vi) facilitación de enlaces a contenidos o instrumentos de búsqueda.
• Del tratamiento y utilización posterior de datos personales realizados por terceros ajenos a ELESAPIENS, así como la pertinencia de la información solicitada por éstos.
• De la calidad y velocidad de acceso al sitio y de las condiciones técnicas que debe reunir el usuario con el fin de poder acceder al sitio y a sus servicios y/o contenidos.
• ELESAPIENS, no será responsable de los retrasos o fallos que se produjeran en el acceso y/o funcionamiento de los servicios y/o contenidos del sitio web, debido a un caso de Fuerza Mayor. “Caso de fuerza mayor” significará todas aquellas causas que no hayan podido preverse, o que aún previstas fueran inevitables, y que dan como resultado el incumplimiento de cualesquiera de sus obligaciones. Entre ellas, pero no de forma limitativa, las huelgas, tanto de sus propios trabajadores como de trabajadores ajenos, insurrecciones o revueltas, así como normas dictadas por cualquier autoridad civil o militar, catástrofes naturales como terremotos, inundaciones, rayos o incendios, guerras, cierres patronales o cualquier otra situación de fuerza mayor.
• El usuario del sitio responderá personalmente de los daños y perjuicios de cualquier naturaleza causados a ELESAPIENS directa o indirectamente, por el incumplimiento de cualquiera de las obligaciones derivadas de estas condiciones generales u otras normas por las que se rija la utilización del sitio.

Propiedad intelectual e industrial

El usuario conoce que los contenidos y servicios ofrecidos a través del sitio -incluyendo textos, gráficos, imágenes, animaciones, creaciones musicales, vídeos, sonidos, dibujos, fotografías, todos los comentarios, exposiciones y código informático de la misma, sin que esta enumeración tenga carácter limitativo- se encuentran protegidos por las leyes de propiedad intelectual e industrial. El derecho de autor y de explotación económica de este sitio corresponde a ELESAPIENS y/o terceras entidades.

Las marcas, nombres comerciales o signos distintivos que aparecen en el sitio web son propiedad de ELESAPIENS y/o en su caso, de terceras entidades, y se encuentran protegidos por las leyes vigentes de propiedad industrial.

La prestación de los servicios y publicación de los contenidos a través del sitio no implicará en ningún caso la cesión, renuncia o transmisión, total o parcial, de la titularidad de los correspondientes derechos de propiedad intelectual e industrial por ELESAPIENS y/o sus terceros legítimos titulares.

Ningún apartado de este sitio web puede ser reproducido, distribuido, transmitido, copiado, comunicado públicamente, transformado, en todo o en parte mediante ningún sistema o método manual, electrónico o mecánico (incluyendo el fotocopiado, grabación o cualquier sistema de recuperación y almacenamiento de información) a través de cualquier soporte actualmente conocido o que se invente en el futuro, sin consentimiento de ELESAPIENS.   La utilización, bajo cualquier modalidad, de todo o parte del contenido del sitio queda sujeta a la necesidad de solicitar autorización previa de ELESAPIENS  y/o terceros titulares legítimos y la aceptación de la correspondiente licencia, en su caso, excepto para lo dispuesto respecto de los derechos reconocidos y concedidos al usuario en estas condiciones generales o lo que así se determine en las condiciones particulares que ELESAPIENS tenga a bien establecer para regular el uso de un determinado servicio y/o contenido ofrecido a través del sitio web.

Contenidos y materiales publicados por el usuario

El usuario se compromete a no introducir, almacenar o difundir mediante este sitio web, cualquier contenido que infrinja derechos de propiedad intelectual o industrial, ni en general ningún contenido respecto del cual no ostenten, de conformidad con la ley, el derecho a ponerlo a disposición de terceros.

No obstante, ELESAPIENS podrá modificar los contenidos, a fin de adaptarlos a las necesidades de formato editorial del sitio web.

ELESAPIENS no se hará responsable de las opciones de disposición que elija el usuario respecto de los contenidos que aloje, poniendo a disposición de los mismos un espacio para que éstos incorporen sus contenidos y los compartan con otros usuarios, no controlando tampoco si los contenidos infringen o no los derechos mencionados en los párrafos anteriores.

Hiperenlaces

El uso de hiperenlaces al presente sitio web únicamente será autorizado por ELESAPIENS mediante autorización escrita y siempre que el hiperenlace se realice en los siguientes términos previstos en las presentes condiciones:

Protección de datos personales

ELESAPIENS garantiza la confidencialidad de los datos de carácter personal facilitados por los usuarios y su tratamiento de acuerdo a la legislación vigente sobre protección de datos de carácter personal: Reglamento (UE) 2016/679, de 27 de abril, General de Protección de Datos. Los datos personales recogidos a través del sitio web serán incorporados a uno o varios tratamientos responsabilidad de ELESAPIENS. A tales efectos, se proporcionará a los usuarios, con carácter previo a la entrega de los datos personales a través de este sitio web, información sobre el tratamiento sin perjuicio de la posibilidad del usuario de acceder a la Política de Privacidad y Protección de Datos de Carácter Personal. La información antedicha permitirá al usuario otorgar su consentimiento informado, específico e inequívoco a fin de que ELESAPIENS proceda al tratamiento de sus datos personales.

TERMINACIÓN

Si bien, en principio, la duración de este sitio es indeterminada, ELESAPIENS se reserva el derecho a suspender o dar por terminada la prestación de algunos o todos sus servicios, sin que esta decisión deba ser comunicada con antelación a los usuarios del mismo.

LEY Y JURISDICCIÓN APLICABLE

Estas condiciones generales se rigen por la legislación española.

Las partes, con expresa renuncia a su propio fuero, se someten para la resolución de cuantos litigios pudieran derivarse a los Juzgados y Tribunales de Madrid (España).

CONTRATACIÓN DE UN PLAN DE SUSCRIPCIÓN PREMIUM

Para contratar un Plan de Suscripción Premium de ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN, S.L., es necesario conectarse a http://www.elesapiens.com , y registrarse como usuario, cumplimentando el formulario electrónico que en cada momento aparezca en la página web de la tienda y siguiendo las instrucciones indicadas en el mismo. ELESAPIENS pone a disposición del usuario todos los medios técnicos necesarios para identificar y corregir errores en la introducción de sus datos en los diferentes formularios que aparecerán en la pantalla durante el proceso de contratación.

Tras el registro, deberá seleccionar el plan y el periodo de suscripción que deseé contratar haciendo clic en botón “Suscribir” correspondiente, según las indicaciones recogidas en pantalla, cumplimentando a estos efectos el formulario de suscripción suministrado, incluida la forma de pago, y validando el mismo. Una vez validada la suscripción no podrán modificarse los datos facilitados para la contratación del plan y periodo seleccionados por el cliente.

Los precios y ofertas presentados en el website son válidos única y exclusivamente para suscripciones online realizadas en http://www.elesapiens.com y pueden no coincidir con los precios y ofertas vigentes en otras tiendas. Todos los precios publicados en nuestra página web son con impuestos indirectos incluidos.

La validación de la suscripción por parte del cliente supone expresamente el conocimiento y aceptación de estas condiciones generales de contratación como parte de la celebración del contrato. Salvo prueba en contrario, los datos registrados por ELESAPIENS constituyen la prueba del conjunto de transacciones realizadas entre ELESAPIENS y sus clientes. ELESAPIENS archivará el documento electrónico en que se formalice el contrato y éste será accesible.

Una vez efectuado por el cliente el pago de la suscripción al plan que haya elegido recibirá, en la dirección de correo electrónico que nos haya facilitado, un email de confirmación de la suscripción. En su cuenta online podrá comprobar toda la información y el estado de su suscripción.

El cliente podrá solicitar a ELESAPIENS la factura o el comprobante de la suscripción contratada.

ELESAPIENS advierte que no se podrán modificar las facturas de suscripción una vez emitidas, sin perjuicio del derecho a obtener factura rectificativa en los supuestos previstos en la normativa vigente (Real Decreto 1619/2012, de 30 de noviembre que aprueba el Reglamento por el que se regulan las obligaciones de facturación). La factura se emite a nombre de la persona física o empresa que aparece en la dirección de facturación cuando se realiza la suscripción, por lo que debe asegurarse de realizar el pedido con la dirección de facturación correcta.

El cliente una vez valide la suscripción, no podrá cancelarla.

Durante el periodo que dure la suscripción contratada, el cliente tiene a su disposición contratar la suscripción de un plan superior.

El cliente tendrá acceso a los contenidos del plan de suscripción contratado durante el periodo contratado. Ninguna suscripción se renueva automáticamente, por lo que el cliente después de la expiración de la suscripción deberá volver a suscribirse a dicho plan mediante el proceso de contratación establecido.

Medios de pago

ELESAPIENS. le propone diversos medios de pago para que pueda elegir aquel que más le convenga o se adapte mejor a sus necesidades:

Pago por Tarjeta de Crédito : Puede utilizar Visa y Mastercard. Pago por Transferencia : Esta modalidad de pago está limitada a suscriptores del plan School. Pago con PayPal : Este método de pago, le permite pagar con su cuenta de PayPal de forma rápida y segura, sin compartir información financiera con ELESAPIENS. Será redirigido a la web segura de PayPal, donde introducirá las credenciales de tu cuenta PayPal, aceptando el pago y después a www.elesapiens.com, donde le confirmaremos su suscripción.

SUSCRIPCIÓN DE UN PLAN GRATUITO

Para suscribirse a un Plan de Suscripción Gratuito de ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN, S.L., como el plan Basic, en las condiciones establecidas por ELESAPIENS, es necesario conectarse a http://www.elesapiens.com , y registrarse como usuario, cumplimentando el formulario electrónico que en cada momento aparezca en la página web de la tienda y siguiendo las instrucciones indicadas en el mismo. ELESAPIENS pone a disposición del usuario todos los medios técnicos necesarios para identificar y corregir errores en la introducción de sus datos en los diferentes formularios que aparecerán en la pantalla durante el proceso de suscripción.

La suscripción a un Plan de Suscripción Gratuito, supone expresamente el conocimiento y aceptación de las condiciones de acceso a los contenidos de dicho Plan por el usuario.

Esta declaración establece la Declaración de privacidad de ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN, S.L, S.L. para este sitio web y debe leerse junto con las Condiciones de uso del sitio web que gobiernan el uso de este sitio web.

En cumplimiento de lo dispuesto en el Reglamento (UE) 2016/679, de 27 de abril, General de Protección de Datos, ELESAPIENS LEARNING & FUN S.L. (en adelante ELESAPIENS) desea poner en conocimiento del usuario del sitio web http://www.elesapiens.com la política respecto del tratamiento y protección de los datos de carácter personal de aquellas personas que voluntariamente se comunican a través del correo electrónico con ELESAPIENS, cumplimentan formularios de recogida de datos o utilizan cualquier otro servicio presente en el sitio web que implique la comunicación de sus datos personales a ELESAPIENS.

ELESAPIENS informa al usuario del sitio web que en esta política de privacidad se contienen todos los aspectos relacionados con el tratamiento de datos personales que ELESAPIENS lleva a cabo como responsable del mismo a través del sitio web.

Se informa al usuario de que cualquier tratamiento de datos personales, quedará bajo el ámbito de aplicación de la legislación vigente en España en materia de protección de datos, establecida en el Reglamento (UE) 2016/679, de 27 de abril, General de Protección de Datos.

ELESAPIENS se reserva el derecho de modificar el contenido la Política de Privacidad con el objeto de adaptarlo a las novedades legislativas o jurisprudenciales, así como a las que pudieran derivarse de códigos tipo existentes en la materia o, en su caso, por decisiones corporativas estratégicas.

Si ELESAPIENS va a utilizar sus datos personales de una manera distinta a lo establecido en la Política de Privacidad vigente al momento de facilitarnos sus datos, hará todo esfuerzo posible para contactar con usted mediante la dirección de correo electrónico que nos haya facilitado. En cualquier caso, se notificará a los usuarios de este cambio mediante la colocación de una notificación en el sitio web de ELESAPIENS.

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Science v humanities a misguided debate

With regard to David Kynaston’s recent letter (22 November) in which he claims that “science can learn far more from the humanities than the other way round”, this exemplifies a misunderstanding of what CP Snow was saying. Yes, he was pointing out that there are two cultures, but he did not believe this was a good thing. He also reported that, while in the company of scientists he would expect them to have a reasonable knowledge of, say, the works of Shakespeare, in the company of those from the humanities he would hardly ever obtain an understanding of the laws of thermodynamics.

Unfortunately, the debate will continue along its misguided path. Some years back, I attended a meeting with a high-ranking civil servant with a background in the humanities who asked the scientists in attendance whether government should stop financing science and let others (eg the US) do it instead. The natural response was that this would lead to the UK being very poor technologically and disadvantaged in terms of the translation of research into business. More importantly, however, it missed the important point that the culture of our country is heavily influenced by science and technology, viz Newton, Bacon, Boyle, Hooke, Darwin and Wallace, the Hunter brothers, Rutherford, Sanger and so on... Professor Bernard Moxham Cardiff

The sciences may indeed help remind us that the universe doesn’t revolve around us, but can they care about that knowledge? It’s the humanities that give us the values that enable us to make some sense of what we’re doing here, including the desire to find out more about how the universe operates. Surely we need both an understanding of the facts of life and how the cosmos function, as well as what adds meaning and purpose to our awareness of being alive, conscious, and human. Otherwise, what is the point of us simply being around? Yair Klein London

David William Evans ( Letters , 24 November) says we should not imagine that the universe revolves around us. Ludwig Wittgenstein, who had a few good ideas in his time, once said that, although you could persuade someone who had thitherto thought the sun went round the Earth that the opposite was true, it would still be right for that person to think of the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Michael Bulley Chalon-sur-Saône, France

Join the debate – email [email protected]

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A retired master teacher of English and Comparative Literature teams up with his son, a History professor, on a new version of the writing manual he wrote and used for decades at the University of California, Davis.

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• Published: 09 April 2019

The place of the humanities in today’s knowledge society

• Rosário Couto Costa   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-7505-4455 1  

Palgrave Communications volume  5 , Article number:  38 ( 2019 ) Cite this article

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Over the past four decades, the humanities have been subject to a progressive devaluation within the academic world, with early instances of this phenomenon tracing back to the USA and the UK. There are several clues as to how the university has generally been placing a lower importance on these fields, such as through the elimination of courses or even whole departments. It is worth mentioning that this discrimination against humanities degrees is indirect in nature, as it is in fact mostly the result of the systematic promotion of other fields, particularly, for instance, business management. Such a phenomenon has nonetheless resulted in a considerable reduction in the percentage of humanities graduates within a set of 30 OECD countries, when compared to other areas. In some countries, a decline can even be observed in relation to their absolute numbers, especially with regards to doctorate degrees. This article sheds some light on examples of international political guidelines, laid out by the OECD and the World Bank, which have contributed to this devaluation. It takes a look at the impacts of shrinking resources within academic departments of the humanities, both inside and outside of the university, while assessing the benefits and value of studying these fields. A case is made that a society that is assumed to be ideally based on knowledge should be more permeable and welcoming to the different and unique disciplines that produce it, placing fair and impartial value on its respective fields.

Introduction

In August 2017, the World Humanities Conference took place in Liège, Belgium. The theme was Challenges and Responsibilities for a Planet in Transition , and it was organized in cooperation with UNESCO. The rationale for this conference can be summarized as follows:

“The humanities were at the heart of both public debate and the political arena until the Second World War. In recent years their part was fading and they have been marginalized. It is crucial to stop their marginalization, restore them and impose their presence in the public sphere as well as in science policies Footnote 1 ”

I participated in this event and it gave me hope that it would be possible to reverse the general trend of devaluating the humanities, something that has been going on since the early 1980s, namely in the UK and in the USA (Costa, 2016 ). Such a phenomenon has coexisted with an acceleration in globalization and a widespread rise of neoliberalism, two trends which have been gradual and simultaneous in their origins (Heywood, 2014 ). In regard to the growth of neoliberalism, while in the 1980s only four countries had what could be reasonably categorized as neoliberal governments (Chile, New Zealand, the UK and the USA), at the beginning of the 21 st century that number had multiplied all around the world (Peck, 2012 ).

This marginalization of the humanities has been a gradual process that manifested itself at different times throughout the countries in which it can be observed. A global approach was used for studying this process (Costa, 2016 ), along with available OECD data which consisted of a subset of thirty countries and recorded the period between 2000 and 2012 Footnote 2 . Under these circumstances, “graduates by field of education” Footnote 3 is arguably one of the few relevant indicators that we can establish. On analysing it, one can conclude that despite some variance in tendencies for each individual nation, there is an overall shift that allows us to confidently corroborate such a devaluation when we compare figures for the year 2000 with those of 2012. This approach was further complemented with the analysis of case studies and existing academic literature on the topic (Costa, 2016 ).

With that in mind, it seems paradoxical that in a so-called knowledge society, one that should be ‘nurtured by its diversity and its capacities’ (UNESCO, 2005 , p.17), not all knowledge fields would be valued in an equitable manner. So why does it happen and why namely at the expense of the humanities? Conversely, what are the reasons for looking at the humanities in a more positive light? These reasons have long been known, but can nowadays lack sufficient recognition. The goal of this comment is to address these questions.

The way to find the answers to these discussion points begins with an analysis of political documents written within the framework of international organisations such as the World Bank and the OECD during the transition into the 21st century. This analysis identifies some political guidelines that have plausibly influenced the global shift in the number of graduates by field of education occuring between 2000 and 2012. Afterwards, we take a look at the impact that these guidelines have had both within and outside of the University. Once done, we reflect on the benefits of studying the humanities and on the complementarity of the various knowledge fields within society.

The political constraints of the devaluation of the humanities in an academic context

Taking into account the already long history of the University, its most recent transformation has been marked by the principles of neoliberalism and the pace of this change has increased since 1998 (Altbach et al., 2009 ). It is in this particular institutional context that the devaluation of the humanities has been taking place. If we pay attention to the general guidelines that have been at the core of this paradigm shift, we can see that the humanities have been confronted not so much with a direct and explicit denial of their benefits, but with the exalting of skills and traits strongly connected to other knowledge fields, such as business administration. This reasoning is based on the following analysis of some specific documents that are enlightening examples of this occurrence.

At The World Conference on Higher Education in the Twenty-First Century , organized by UNESCO in 1998, in Paris, two talks expanded on how the University was already undergoing a process of transformation—one from a practical point of view, and the second from a conceptual one.

In the first talk, titled The Financing and Management of Higher Education: a Status Report on Worldwide Reforms (Johnstone et al. 1998 ), the authors explain how the World Bank implemented its political agenda in order to reform the University throughout the 90s in several countries. A political decision to reduce public investment fundamentally altered the financial and managerial scenarios of the University. A result of this was that the academic sector was steered towards the markets, with an explicit mention in the report that this shift was meant to align with neoliberal principles.

The consistency of this reform has been hailed as remarkable by the cited authors. It has followed similar patterns across all countries independently of existing differences between them with regards to political and economic systems, states of industrial and technological development, and the structuring elements of the higher education system itself.

In the other talk, titled Higher Education Relevance in the 21st Century , Michael Gibbons ( 1998 ), counselor to the World Bank, affirms the urgency of a new paradigm for the University, and theorizes such a transformation. Accordingly, the main mission of the University would be to serve the economy, specifically through the training of human resources, as well as the production of knowledge, for that purpose. Other functions would be cast into the background. In order for this institution to adjust to its new priorities, the author affirms that a new culture would have to impose itself on the University: a new way of considering accountability—so called “new accountability”—with financial accounting at its core; the dissemination of a new practice of highly ideological management (“new public management” or “new managerialism”); and a new way of utilizing human resources with the goal of maximizing efficiency. In short, an entrepreneurial outlook on the concept of “University”.

A few years later, the document The New Economy. Beyond the Hype (OECD, 2001 ) essentially anticipated the impact of the then new model of University on the prioritization of the various fields of knowledge. The success of this “New Economy”, where a noticeable rise in investment in information and communication technologies (ICT) was apparent, required individuals qualified not only to work with these technologies but also fit to answer the new organizational challenges brought about by them. Due to this, areas such as ICT and management began to become promoted more strongly, namely in higher education and research, and the connection between higher education and the job market strengthened.

An indirect discrimination of the humanities was thus induced, with real-world consequences. One of the symptoms relating to such a social phenomenon has been a progressively lower relative representation of graduates in humanities and, in some countries, also of the absolute representation, especially with regards to doctorate degrees. For instance, in the period between 2000 and 2012, while the number of humanities graduates rose by a factor of 1.4—and that of total graduates by a factor of 1.6 overall—those in the area of business administration increased by a factor of 1.8 Footnote 4 . For perspective, this accounts for virtually a fifth of total graduates. In other words, although academia within the humanities is growing, it is doing so at a disproportionately lower pace than when compared with other fields.

As Pierre Bourdieu had already outlined in Homo Academicvs (Bourdieu, 1984 ), alterations in the relative representation of students of certain areas, and thus of respective University staff, have an impact not only on power balances within the University, but also on its influence on society itself. The author saw these as morphological changes—a point of view that shapes the following considerations.

The impact of shrinking resources within academic departments of the humanities

With regard to the internal impact of shrinking resources within academic departments of the humanities, we can identify several clues as to how the University has generally been placing a lower importance on the humanities Footnote 5 :

Cuts in the financing of research and teaching;

a lower share of the space and structure within the University, through the elimination of courses and even departments;

undervalued human resources (fewer job offers, falling wages, overloaded work schedules, aging staff, lack of opportunities for the young);

a decrease in library resources and the like;

the use of evaluation methods typical of scientific activity and which are unadjusted to the specificity of the humanities, indirectly resulting in pressure to change communication practices specific to these fields and weakening their social impact;

the extent to which some fields in the humanities are weakened, reaching dimensions so residual that they become at risk of disappearing.

These phenomena, even when not simultaneous, contribute to paving the way to further devaluation as they ultimately work together to make the humanities look progressively less attractive. In an academic context we are essentially confronted with a vicious cycle of devaluation. The next two sections deal with a series of reasons for why it becomes urgent to break such a cycle.

If on the one hand we are witnessing a shrinking of resources within academic departments of the humanities, on the other we can see a clear reduction in the relative representation of humanities graduates entering the job market. Without going too much into detail on the interdependence between these two phenomena, they stand as symptoms of a clear loss of influence of the humanities on society itself – perhaps the result of a growing incomprehension of their usefulness. Indeed, the field appears to be held hostage to a way of appreciation that is overly focused on the economy, established by those who govern and apparently accepted by most of those governed. Governors in particular tend to have a peculiar, restricted and limited way of evaluating, classifying and neglecting the humanities, even if opinions amongst themselves are not always in agreement. Through this lens, the field can be pretentiously seen as a luxury, as economically irrelevant, or even as useless - worse still, as an obstacle to access the job market Footnote 6 .

These dynamics make it even more difficult for academics in the humanities to convince others of the relevance of their area. Therefore, when competing with other areas for resources, the overall trend has been to deprioritise the humanities.

In the above-mentioned report titled Towards Knowledge Societies , UNESCO recognized that political choices tend sometimes to place a high importance on specific disciplines, namely ‘at the expense of the humanities’ (UNESCO, 2005 , p. 90). These words are coated with a subtle yet sharp sense of loss. But what is in fact lost when the humanities see their presence in society diminished?

The benefits of studying the humanities

An analysis of several sources of information, such as surveys, studies and websites, has made it possible to understand the point of view of different social actors who believe there are advantages to graduating in the humanities (Costa, 2016 ). Students (Armitage et al., 2013 ), graduates (Lamb et al., 2012 ) and researchers (Levitt et al., 2010 ) in the humanities share their opinion on what the main advantages are, and their takes coincide with the way humanities courses are promoted on the websites of the universities that were taken into account in the analysis Footnote 7 . As it would turn out, these advantages match the profile of the ideal employee as outlined by a group of employers as a condition to achieve success at their companies, according to a separate study that is unrelated to the humanities in particular (Hart Research Associates, 2013 ). In other words, even neoliberal standards and concerns are adequately addressed.

At its core, this acknowledgement of the value of the humanities can be looked at in three independent, mutually reinforcing levels: the comprehensive knowledge, skills and mindset that come with studying the field, and which are not easily outdated. These assets represent the genuine and specific character of studying these disciplines, and substantially differ from the priorities set by the political guidelines mentioned earlier. The following picture clarifies the scope of each of these levels (Fig. 1 ).

Benefits of studying the humanities. Source: adapted from Costa, 2017 , with permission of the Portuguese Association of Professionals in Sociology of Organizations and Work–APSIOT. The figure is not covered by the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Licence

The attraction of studying the humanities lies precisely in that which one sets out to know and experiment with when one opts to study them. History, philosophy, languages and literature, to mention a few, are nuclear subjects that give us direct access to knowledge on that which is fundamentally and irreducibly human.

The challenge that this knowledge presents us with, and the effort of interpreting and attributing meaning to ourselves and that which surrounds us, are enhancers of the skills and mindset highlighted in the above graphic and their value is undeniable. Critical thought, acknowledgement of others, the ability to adjust to different realities and so forth are indispensable traits in any situation—in any institution, organization, government or company. It would thus follow that the humanities should be as explicitly and directly promoted by public policy as is specialized knowledge that directly serves firms and markets.

In spite of the value that can be recognized in studying the humanities, it stands that in the last few decades education in the field has been reduced to an almost insignificant dimension relative to other areas. It should be noted that demand in higher education is representative not just of the expectations of the students, or even of their educational and social backgrounds. It is also conditioned by the choices of a large group of social actors, interdependent amongst themselves Footnote 8 , such as decision makers – be it national or international, political or institutional –, employers and parents. But this depreciation has not been exclusive to higher education only. It has led to generalized deficits in knowledge, sensitivity and imagination, cognitive resources which are necessary to the acknowledgement of real problems within society and likewise to the development of possible solutions. The ability for citizens to possess and demonstrate a mindset of critical thinking has in this way been undermined.

One can thus argue that, at the very least from a social standpoint, much could be lost here. Martha Nussbaum warned in 2010 about the dangers this poses to democracy itself. The number of billionaires has nearly doubled as wealth has become even more concentrated in the last ten years since the financial crisis, worsening social inequalities (OXFAM, 2019 ). A society of consumption and uncontrolled, unregulated and acritical exploitation of natural resources is hindering sustainable development. Perhaps somewhat ironically, even the market economy registers some losses of its own in this scenario. The University of Oxford studied the career path of a group of their graduates in humanities, who had been students from 1960–1989, and subsequently produced a report that ‘shines a light on the breadth and variety of roles in society that they adopt, and the striking consistency with which they have had successful careers in sectors driving economic growth’ (Kreager, 2013 , p. 1). This conclusion contradicts the vision, or perhaps the bias, according to which graduations within the humanities are considered useless and of no value, especially for the economy and the labour market in general. The TED Talk Why tech needs the humanities Footnote 9 (December 2017) addresses this issue in the light yet personal manner of someone who has experienced it first hand.

On the complementarity of the various knowledge fields within society

In contrast to the trend within the humanities, from 2000 to 2012 and as previously mentioned, graduates in the area of business administration grew both in numbers and in relevance. Georges Corm ( 2013 ) considers that a new wave of employees, trained in accordance with the neoliberal ideas, has emerged in the job market. In his opinion, this is noticeable for instance in the case of MBAs, which in general have a similar format in use in the best schools around the world. Engwall et al. ( 2010 ) had already come to the conclusion that these graduates have become the new elite, taking up the leadership positions within organizations, replacing graduates namely in law and in engineering.

According to Colin Crouch ( 2016 ), ‘financial expertise has become the privileged form of knowledge, trumping other kinds, because it is embedded in the operation of […] the institutions that ensure profit maximization […]. Under certain conditions this dominance of financial knowledge can become self-destructive, destroying other forms of knowledge on which its own future depends’ (ibid., p. 34). Indeed, ‘serious problems arise when one kind of knowledge systematically triumphs over others’ (ibid., p. 35), a sentiment the author illustrates by giving examples related to engineering and geology. It can be argued that such a large pool of graduates and post-graduates in business administration has severely disrupted the balance and the complementarity of wisdom in society.

The environmental disasters and social crises that have marked the last decade, and which we have all witnessed, mean that the priority which had been given to some fields of knowledge is a concern not just of the academic community, but that it should instead be seen as an issue for all of society. If we start discrediting certain kinds of knowledge, we might end up discrediting all which are not in accordance with the interests that prevail in society at any given point in time, interests which in turn might not necessarily have the common good as their priority. This would be akin to opening a Pandora’s box.

Where has this led us? For instance, few of us are unaware of the difficulties that scientific evidence faces today in order to be appreciated and accepted by people who are farthest from the world of science, and who will more easily trust populist discourses (Baron, 2016 ; Boyd, 2016 ; Gluckman, 2017 ; Horton and Brown, 2018 ). Current disinvestment in the teachings of philosophy, particularly in the young, pulls us away from the basic foundations of knowledge and science, ultimately furthering the establishment of a post-truth society.

Concluding remarks

The process of devaluation of the humanities fortunately has not been enough to nullify the voice and ongoing work of their community. The World Humanities Conference, mentioned at the very beginning of this text, is a sign of the vitality and pertinence that this field still holds. When we look at the topics discussed at this conference, they are undoubtedly of great relevance for the society of today: ‘Humanity and the environment’; ‘Cultural identities, cultural diversities and intercultural relations: a global multicultural humanity’; ‘Borders and migrations’; ‘Heritage’; ‘History, memory and politics’; ‘The humanities in a changing world. What changes the world and in the world? What changes the humanities and in the humanities?’; and ‘Rebuilding the humanities, rebuilding humanism’. Events like this conference allow for the hope that a new and virtuous cycle for the humanities could be on the upswing for the benefit of all of society. One which will be more permeable and welcoming to all knowledge and skills, valuing all of its fields in a fair and impartial manner. Ultimately, the hope is to have a society that is zealous and proactive in the protection of a rich diversity of knowledge from the establishment and dominance of political hierarchies.

In: http://www.humanities2017.org/en .

Set of years for which OECD data are available in a usable way (verified in 23 May 2018 at OECD.Stat).

According to the ISCED 1997 (levels 5A and 6)—International Standard Classification of Education 1997 (first and second stages of tertiary education).

For this indicator, data for a subset of thirty OECD countries were used.

This systematization is based on the interpretation of a plurality of official statistics and reports on several countries (Costa, 2016 ).

Observations based on several publications, some of which are included in the bibliography (Benneworth and Jongbloed, 2010 ; Bod, 2011 ; Bok, 2007 ; Brinkley, 2009 ; Classen, 2012 ; Donoghue, 2010 ; European University Association, 2011 ; Fish, 2010 ; Gewirtz and Cribb, 2013 ; Gumport, 2000 ; Nussbaum, 2010 ; Weiland, 1992 ).

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Sunday, January 6, 2019

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Your chance of acceptance, your chancing factors, extracurriculars, humanities vs. social sciences - which one.

I'm trying to decide between majoring in humanities or social sciences, but I'm unsure about the differences between the two and which one might fit me best. Can someone give me an idea of what each entails and any factors I should consider when making my decision?

Both humanities and social sciences explore various aspects of human culture, behavior, and society. However, they have different areas of focus and use distinct approaches to investigate their subjects. Here's a quick overview of each:

Humanities : This field studies human expression, culture, and philosophy. It typically covers subjects like literature, languages, history, art history, philosophy, and religious studies. The approach in humanities is often interpretative or analytical, and it often involves examining texts, artifacts, or other cultural expressions to understand their meanings and implications.

Social Sciences : This field studies human behavior, society, and interactions. It focuses on subjects like psychology, sociology, political science, economics, anthropology, and human geography. Social scientists use scientific methods, empirical data, and research techniques to analyze patterns in human behavior and society, aiming to develop theories or models that explain these patterns.

To decide which one might be a better fit for you, consider the following:

1. Subjects you enjoy : Reflect on the courses you've taken so far and determine which subjects you genuinely enjoy and excel at. If you find yourself more drawn to literature, languages, or philosophy, humanities might be a better fit for you. If you're more interested in understanding human behavior, social dynamics, or the economy, social sciences could be right for you.

2. Career prospects : Think about the professions and industries that interest you, and try to map them to the fields of study. For example, a humanities major might be more suitable if you're interested in journalism, publishing, or cultural management, while a social sciences major might be ideal for careers in public policy, data analysis, or urban planning.

3. Research and analysis methods : Consider whether you'd enjoy working with primary sources, texts, and artifacts to explore human culture and thought (humanities) or whether you'd prefer using quantitative or qualitative methods to analyze data (social sciences). Knowing your preferred research style can help inform your decision.

4. Interdisciplinary opportunities : Keep in mind that you don't necessarily have to choose one field or the other. Many colleges offer interdisciplinary programs, double majors, or dual-degree options that allow you to combine your interests and study both humanities and social sciences simultaneously.

Ultimately, the best choice will depend on your personal preferences, academic strengths, and career goals. Reflect on the points above, attend college information sessions, and seek guidance from current students or professors in each field to make a well-informed decision. Good luck!

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"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

Writing for the Humanities vs Social Sciences

        My experience at Fleming thus far has dramatically improved my understanding of the many differences between writing for the humanities and writing for the social sciences. Right now, for example, I am writing in what is called an active voice, or active writing–a style of writing which is “outlawed” (Gocsik, Humanities , par. 8) from the social sciences. Passive writing, which avoids the use of the “very subjective “I” (Gocsik, Social Sciences par. 9), is better suited when presenting objective data and reason, as the passive “ observation seems more objective and impersonal”. (Gocsik par. 9). Active writing is suited for discussing the subjective experience, like interpreting a text’s meaning or reflecting on a philosophical idea.

        Furthermore, while a humanities major must support their argument using “textual evidence” (Gocsik, Humanities par. 5), while a social science major must use evidence that is “either quantitative, based on statistics, or […] qualitative, based on observation”. (Gocsik, Social Sciences, par. 5). The humanities focus most often on subjective interpretation; philosophy, creative writing, classic literature–these all require the use of textual evidence, as there is no empirical evidence to be found. Social sciences on the other hand are the opposite, relying exclusively on objective data–on the facts, the empirical. In the social sciences experiments, questionnaires and surveys are used to find evidence, whereas the humanities look for evidence found within the text under question–whether it be a song, poem or shakespearean play.

        Finally, the structure a humanities paper looks dramatically different from a paper published within the social sciences. Writing for the humanities does not require the use of a set format. Instead “what you intend to say will determine how you are going to say it” (Gocsik, Humanities par. 6). The social sciences do things very differently; “rigid format[s]” (par. 6) are used to save the writer from having to create his own structure, and allow precise presentation of his hypothesis, experimentation methods, results and conclusion.

        I’ll compare to pieces of writing I’ve completed this year, one being for the humanities and the other for the social sciences: a philosophical dialogue assignment and a psychological research summary. Both papers used a citation system, the research summary adhering to APA format, the dialogue MLA. Furthermore, both assignments required the arguments to be written neatly and concisely, and utilized similar structural components like introduction and conclusion.

        As one might expect, the differences between these assignments far outweighed the similarities. The evidence required in the research summary had been gathered via the scientific method using a hypothesis to formulate an experiment and gather empirical date. The dialogue however relied on no evidence of the sort; evidence was textual and abstract, relying exclusively on logical coherence and philosophical debate. The overall structure of the assignments varied dramatically from each other; the dialogue assignment required little adherence to format, while rigorously strict formatting was mandatory while writing the research summary.

        If I were to give advice to the Fleming GSU program, I would advise them to pay close attention to instructions. Nobody likes writing an assignment only to receive a low mark because they forgot to adhere MLA or APA. Read instructions, ask questions and study hard!

Works Cited

Gocsik, Karen. “Writing for the Humanities.”  COMM 64.  PDF. 23 Nov. 2018.       Desire2Learn

Gocsik, Karen. “Writing for the Social Sciences.”  COMM 64.  PDF. 23 Nov.     2018.  Desire2Learn

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