The Humanities Code: how literature helps to write software. The author talks about the creative process required to compose ideas in all languages, including the technological. From the article: I’ve worked in software for years and, time and again, I’ve seen someone apply the arts to solve a problem of systems. The reason for this [...]
The virtues (and folly) of science and scholarship: learning merits its laurels, but to what ends, if life (and self-knowledge) is neglected? “Envy, curiosity, and a sense of the imperfection of our present state, incline us to estimate the advantages which are in the possession of others above their real value. Every one must have remarked, [...]
Transhumanism: what does the future hold? The Washington Post hosts a series of commentaries on the value and validity, the promise and peril, of transhumanism, with its promise to "transcend the human condition." So do we need the "transhumanities"? Or develop the next variant of digital humanities? From the introductory statement: Transhumanism, in its most extreme [...]
Free speech and the humanities: do the humanities foster, or inhibit, freedom of expression? The author decries the "identity politics" and "improper advocacy" among the humanities, which undermine open, rigorous inquiry. From the article: The problem of political correctness is intensified by the increasing fixation of humanities and even history departments on “presentism,” that is, a preoccupation [...]
An encounter with Renaissance art, and its consequence: Boris Pasternak reflects on culture and individual genius. The chief thing that everyone carries away from an encounter with Italian art is the sensation of the tangible unity of our culture, whatever he may have seen this in, and whatever name he may give it. How much [...]
Happy graduation, humanities students! "Better a few good scholars than many indifferent ones." You embody the meaning of George Washington's mandate to James McHenry, to paraphrase: it is infinitely better to have a few good scholars, than many indifferent ones. For the number of humanities majors has now decreased to the lowest level in a [...]
Triumph of the Advocates: a vision for this world, or the next. Lapidus. Hey you, Lepus! What are you doing there, sitting around? Are you stargazing? Lepus. Lapidus, what’s wrong? You look distressed. Lapidus. I’m tired, that is all. Perhaps that is the reason for my distress. I just dreamt the most amazing dream, a [...]
Nature, time, and self-discovery: a physicist speaks about the mysteries of our lives, hearkening to Lucretius: Nature is our home, and in nature we are at home. This strange, multicolored, and astonishing world that we explore -- where space is granular, time does not exist, and things are nowhere -- is not something that estranges us [...]
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 @ [...]
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 [...]
