The fight over liberal arts education in Japan. The humanities and liberal arts are under pressure from the government, but have allies in the business community. From the article: the national government wants to focus national resources for higher education on fields that nourish students’ skills that are immediately adaptable to the needs of the labor [...]
Scholars bulldozing history. How Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study will demolish an important site of the American Revolution: the Battle of Princeton. From the article: In today’s academia there are many scholars against scholarship, including historians hostile to history — postmodernists who think the past is merely a social construct reflecting the present’s preoccupations, or [...]
Where it's at: or better, where "at" (@) has been. What is modern is ancient, if we should notice. From the article: "The earliest yet discovered reference to the @ symbol is a religious one. It features in a 1345 Bulgarian translation of a Greek chronicle. Held today in the Vatican Apostolic Library, it features the @ [...]
Wise fools and foolish wits: what experience should teach us, if we would learn from it: "To learn that we have said or done a foolish thing, that is nothing: we must learn that we are fools, a far broader and more important lesson." Michel de Montaigne, "On Experience"
A quarrel for the ages: Past Present, and Future are at odds with each other. Past: Can you hear me? Future: I am waiting for your voice, and your counsel. Speak up! Present: What's the fuss? Past: I am trying to speak to the Future. Future: I am trying to hear the Past. Present: You [...]
Computers transform our knowledge of the past. According to the author, computerized quantitative analysis offers insights that traditional historical study cannot. From the article: Huge swathes of our past are slowly but surely getting digitised as old books and scanned and organised. It stands to reason that surely once the historians get to work it [...]
Judgments about the arts: mind what you put in! Ben Jonson tells his audience how much they may assess what they see, depending on their means: It is further agreed that every person here have his or their free-will of censure, to like or dislike at their own charge, the playwright having now departed with [...]
A classics major adds value for engineering and STEM: a profile of Tim O'Reilly, who brings classical ethics and eloquence to the world of technology. From the article: O’Reilly has a deep understanding of how knowledge should disseminate in a society, and how best to make that happen.... Building a knowledge community is an art, [...]
Gambling on the meaning of nothing: how much do we really understand one another, even as friends? Minaccio, a witty man and a gambler, once lost his cash and his coat, too, playing at dice (he was truly poor), and sat weeping at the doorway of the tavern. A friend saw him distraught and in [...]
How the humanities teach us the art of life. A professor of literature asks about life's greater meaning, which the humanities may provide. According to the author, "The humanities interrogate us. They challenge our sense of who we are, even of who our brothers and sisters might be."
