Are the humanities "useless"? If so, do they still provide a use? Said Hui Shih to Chuang-tzu: “These sayings of yours are useless.” “It is only with people who know about the useless that there is any point in talking about uses. In all the immensity of heaven and earth, a man uses no more than [...]
An historian asks about the ways the humanities are suitable for modern society.
Science and (the absence of) happiness: to what degree do science and technology condition our sense of happiness? During the last few generations humankind has made an extraordinary advance in the natural sciences and in their technological application and has established humanity's control over nature in a way never before imagined.... People are proud of these achievements, [...]
How the humanities may lead us to greater self-knowledge, beyond the demands of the market place.
The humanities at Davos: Yale's President Peter Salovey, a scholar of emotional intelligence, speaks at the World Economic Forum about the place of humanities. From the article: Speaking at the reception ... Salovey emphasized the ways that the humanities can promote understanding, such as how the study of languages can provide insights into a culture, reading literature can [...]
The balance needed for wholeness.
The highest mode of life: a proposal from 2500 years ago, relevant today in all dimensions. If on the other hand I tell you that to let no day pass without discussing goodness [aretês] and all the other subjects about which you hear me talking and examining both myself and others is really the very [...]
Humanities aid the growth of STEM: a mathematics professor calculates their value, an important formula...when others are now estimating the worth of the NEH as close to zero. From the editorial: ... [F]or STEM majors, as much as for other future professionals, a broad background in the humanities is likely to give them a tremendous advantage in [...]
Addressing or dismissing the anxieties of conscience: is this the purview of medical science? Or of other therapy? In our time (this is truth, and it is significant for the Christianity of our time), in our time it is the physician who exercises the cure of souls. People have perhaps an unfounded dread of calling in [...]
Mocking the humanities: a pundit recounts how a scientist used parody -- a classic literary mode of expression -- to mock academic practices in the humanities. From the commentary: Alan Sokal's point ... was that intellectual inquiry in the humanities often is not open. The humanities, he today tells The Chronicle, had become a “subculture” [...]
