I want to talk today about the state of the Humanities and how I think they are being ill treated by the public at large and by others especially in the universities. I think it all boils down to one thing, material advantage. Since the science can give a material advantage, it is given money by the university, government, and business. The Humanities on the other hand do not give immediate material advantage. They only try to understand things which are in and of themselves not necessarily material. With science, you can show people what they can get or do with certain knowledge (often called technology). Because of this material advantage, key understanding of our culture gets left behind. Some in the Humanities try to compensate for this by trying to by "scientific", thus there are the "social sciences" like sociology, which, in my view, are only Humanities masquerading as "science" to get the prestige and money of the natural sciences. When major human events happen, which science cannot explain, people turn to the Humanities for an explanation. One day without proper funding, the Humanities are not going to be there to help explain major human events. I think we are going to be poorer for it and possibly the world is going to be a much more dangerous place.
In my normal life, not much is going on. I was supposed to meet with people from the Highland Society today but they had to back out due to school work. Exams are on right now and everyone in the undergraduate levels are freaking out as usual. Interestingly, this does not stop their carousing on the weekends.
posted by Chris #6:58 PM | 0 comments |
