What do the humanities have to say? And who should listen? A note from Mary Beard, at year's end: They have just issued on the website a top 24 of Cambridge research stories this year. On my reckoning, 19 of those are pure science.... You’d think from looking at this roster that none of the work that [...]
The "third culture" integrating science and humanities: employing a term developed by C.P. Snow and John Brockman, an Italian astronomer reflects on the creative way forward: Emotion therefore is common to science and art, humanistic and scientific culture. Emotion is conveyed through language. Emotion and language (be it literary, artistic or scientific) are the links [...]
The Greatest of New Years: that our age of science is also the age of the humanities, from our St. Petersburg correspondent, 1 January 2017 “S nastupivishim!”: “Happy upcoming New Year!” So the new year begins here, ahead of yours, and we have been enjoying the sparkling lights in the Nevsky Prospekt. There are fewer tourists [...]
The English we thought we knew: now that the majority of English speakers is non-native, how is that changing the language, our prime means of communication? Is the English-speaking world getting larger, or more fragmented: more coherent, or more incoherent? And what does this portend for the learning of other languages? From the article: With non-native English speakers [...]
Material success and intellectual life: worlds collide. Ramesh Ponnuru interviews Robert P. George and Cornell West, with surprising results. From his account: One thing that surprised me about our panel, though, was how little they dwelt on political correctness and how much they talked about another threat to the liberal arts: the tendency to view [...]
Solitude, inwardness, and demands of life: how listening to the inner self, the poetic voice, offers freedom from conventions of work and society. I don’t want you to be without a greeting from me when Christmas comes and when you, in the midst of the holiday, are bearing your solitude more heavily than usual. But [...]
Tiny bubbles, of the mind (make us feel happy / make us feel fine): the way technological mathematics limits our thinking, enclosing us in ever-smaller circles of awareness. From the article: The ubiquity of incredibly powerful algorithms designed to reinforce our interests also ensures that we see little of what’s new, different and unfamiliar. The [...]
Learning, language, and moral character: to what degree does education, in humanities or the sciences, influence our moral progress? Their own weakness, however, is not the only factor which can make students of philosophy waver and double back. The earnest advice of friends and the mocking, bantering attacks of critics can also, on their occurrence, [...]
Science and the music of history: is this a new age of knowledge? A scientist and an historian discuss the value of the past, and the promise of the future. Scientist: Hey there, Scrupulus, what have you been up to this morning? Historian: Oh hello, Speculus. Just listening to music. Scientist: I like to do that, [...]
History and contingency of knowledge: the ways that studying the past can teach us how we can better understand one another today. From the editorial: My introduction to the power of the liberal arts came in an undergraduate course studying the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.... Until then, I had assumed (as most high school students [...]
