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 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 [...]
Time and remembrance: recalling our place in the change of the year opens up new possibilities for us to commemorate the lives of others, to "preserve frail transitory fame," and also to acknowledge the source of what is lasting and eternal. To the Countess of Bedford, On New Year's Day THIS twilight of two years, not past, nor [...]
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 [...]
The breath of memory: the science of our historical lives. How we breathe, and when we breathe, affects the way we recognize and recall what lies before us. A new study has wide implications for our reading and understanding the world's many forms of expression. From the study: The rhythm of breathing creates electrical activity in the [...]
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 [...]
The human difference? Perhaps the humanities: fluid language and historical sensibility. From the article: The first astonishing fact is that we can speak at all, of course. No matter what you’ve been thinking and feeling throughout the day, you will be able to find words to express the experience and describe it to those around [...]
Technology's cost, humanity's price: whether we understand the ways technology asserts its influence even over our most basic self-understanding Modern science and the total state, as necessary consequences of the nature of technology, are also its attendants. The same holds true of the means and forms that are set up for the organization of public [...]
Platinum, poetry, and the past: using science to imagine the poet's response to history Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry.... In the last article I tried to point out the importance of the relation of the poem to other poems by other authors, and suggested the conception [...]
