News articles and commentary on the place of the humanities in the modern world.
What do the humanities have to say? And who should listen?
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 [...]
Heralding the creative economy: Andrew Chitty leads the effort in the UK
Heralding the creative economy: Andrew Chitty leads the effort in the UK. The Arts and Humanities Research Council strengthens the fundamental ties between business and the humanities with its new Creative Economy Champion. From the press [...]
The English we thought we knew (Lennox Morrison, BBC Capital)
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, [...]
Daydreaming and neuroscience (Alison Gopnik, Wall Street Journal)
Daydreaming and neuroscience: how brain imaging may track the creative process fostered by the wandering mind. From the article: Dr. Christoff and colleagues suggest that creative thought involves a special interaction between these control systems [...]
Material success and intellectual life: worlds collide (Ramesh Ponnuru, Bloomberg View)
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 [...]
Tiny bubbles, of the mind (Sydney Finkelstein, BBC Capital)
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 [...]
The breath of memory: the science of our historical lives (ScienceDaily)
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 [...]
The business of Britain: Theresa May speaks about investment in science, but not in humanities
The business of Britain: Prime Minister Theresa May speaks about investment in the sciences. But what of the humanities? From her speech: I want to ask you to work with me to show that the forces [...]
History and the contingency of knowledge (Willard Dix, Forbes)
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 [...]
Code can kill (Bill Sourour, Free Code Camp)
Embedding ethics in the code driving technology.