News articles and commentary on the place of the humanities in the modern world.
The human difference? (David Robson, BBC)
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 [...]
The same wavelength: how language stimulates our minds in similar ways (Ushma Patel, News at Princeton)
The same wavelength: how language stimulates the brains of speakers and listeners in similar ways. Prof. Uri Hasson of Princeton, a philosophy undergraduate major, studies the complexity of understanding with imagination and magnetic resonance imaging. [...]
Voices heard: humanities in the public media (April Simpson, Current)
Voices heard: humanities in the public media. How the arts of communication allow deeper and broader conversation. From the article: Eric Garcia McKinley [a History Ph.D.] will eventually try to engage with underrepresented communities, informing how Minnesota [...]
From past stupidity to future intelligence (The Long+Short)
From past stupidity to future intelligence: Stephen Hawking speaks, not without irony, about AI at the new Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge. From his remarks: We spend a great deal of time [...]
STEM requires the humanities to grow (Scientific American)
STEM requires the humanities to grow: why learning classics along with coding is the best way forward. From the editorial: Promoting science and technology education to the exclusion of the humanities may seem like a [...]
From Greece to China
From Greece to China, with kouros: the Terracotta Warriors in Xi'an may have found their footing through Greek artisans who migrated to China, a hypothesis supported by genetic research. From the article: A separate study shows [...]
Merging Human with Artificial Intelligence: The Reality of Sam Altman (Tad Friend, The New Yorker)
Merging Human with Artificial Intelligence: The Reality of Sam Altman. The co-founder of Y Combinator considers the consequences of technology. From the article: On a trip to New York, Altman dropped by my apartment [...]
Military mindfulness: STEM soldiers should also cultivate the liberal arts (Joseph Zengerle, Washington Post)
Military mindfulness: STEM soldiers should also cultivate the liberal arts. The modern military needs the humanities to realize its mission. From the editorial: But even in an age of highly sophisticated warfare, our military leaders should not [...]
Kudos to our modernity (Barack Obama, Wired and Weekly Address): UPDATED
Kudos to our modernity: how science continues to transform our lives for the better, to the point that now is the greatest time in history to be alive. From the editorial: This kind of progress hasn’t [...]
Death by technology (Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine)
Death by technology: how living with technology deprives us of silence, inwardness, and the ability to find the well-springs of life. And this condition has its own, overlooked history. From the article: The English Reformation began, [...]