Humanities

[1] They use methods that are primarily critical, speculative, or interpretative and have a significant historical element[1]—as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of science.

The studia humanitatis was a course of studies that consisted of grammar, literature, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy, primarily derived from the study of Latin and Greek classics.The related Latin word humanitas inspired the Renaissance Italian neologism umanisti, or "humanists" which referred to scholars dedicated to these fields and were instrumental in reviving classical learning, a hallmark of "Renaissance humanism.

In contrast, the social sciences employ a nomothetic approach (seeking general laws and patterns) through empirical and quantitative analysis, a distinction first conceptualized by philosopher Wilhelm Windelband.

Though debates persist about the practical utility of the humanities, proponents argue that their unique focus on meaning, creativity, and critical inquiry contributes both to individual enrichment and the public sphere.

Literature, covering a variety of uses of language including prose forms (such as the novel), poetry and drama, also lies at the heart of the modern humanities curriculum.

Law has been defined in various ways, such as "a system of rules",[15] "an interpretive concept" for achieving justice,[16] "an authority" to mediate between people's interests,[17] or "the command of a sovereign" backed by the threat of punishment.

It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorised according to historical periods, or according to their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).

Philosophy—etymologically, the "love of wisdom"—is generally the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, justification, truth, justice, right and wrong, beauty, validity, mind, and language.

Dance (from Old French dancier, perhaps from Frankish) generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting.

Ancient Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions.

However, in the Renaissance, a renewed focus on the physical world was reflected in art forms that depicted the human body and landscape in a more naturalistic and three-dimensional way.

[36] The physical and rational certainties depicted by the 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein[37] and of unseen psychology by Freud,[38] but also by unprecedented technological development.

Literally, painting is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall.

Painting has been used throughout history to express spiritual and religious ideas, from mythological scenes on pottery to the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, to body art.

[39] During Roman times, the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium), along with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium).

Classicist Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind (1987): Social science and humanities have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine.

[48][49][50] However, the empirical evidence also shows that humanities graduates still earn notably higher incomes than workers with no postsecondary education, and have job satisfaction levels comparable to their peers from other fields.

[55] Research has shown that humanities majors are especially adept at "soft skills" such as "written and oral communication, creative problem-solving, teamwork, decision-making, self-management, and critical analysis".

They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world where irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason.

[74] Since the late 19th century, a central justification for the humanities has been that it aids and encourages self-reflection—a self-reflection that, in turn, helps develop personal consciousness or an active sense of civic duty.

[75] Scholars in the late 20th and early 21st centuries extended that "narrative imagination"[76] to the ability to understand the records of lived experiences outside of one's own individual social and cultural context.

[9] That conscience might take the form of a passive one that allows more effective self-reflection[77] or extend into active empathy that facilitates the dispensation of civic duties a responsible world citizen must engage in.

[9] There is disagreement, however, on the level of influence humanities study can have on an individual and whether or not the understanding produced in humanistic enterprise can guarantee an "identifiable positive effect on people".

[dubious – discuss] In the wake of the death of the author proclaimed by Roland Barthes, various theoretical currents such as deconstruction and discourse analysis seek to expose the ideologies and rhetoric operative in producing both the purportedly meaningful objects and the hermeneutic subjects of humanistic study.

[81] And the humanities do not even provide any more the kind of social cachet (what sociologists sometimes call "cultural capital") that was helpful to succeed in Western society before the age of mass education following World War II.

Such pleasure contrasts with the increasing privatization of leisure and instant gratification characteristic of Western culture; it thus meets Jürgen Habermas' requirements for the disregard of social status and rational problematization of previously unquestioned areas necessary for an endeavor which takes place in the bourgeois public sphere.

[citation needed] Others, like Mark Bauerlein, argue that professors in the humanities have increasingly abandoned proven methods of epistemology (I care only about the quality of your arguments, not your conclusions.)

Such arguments appeal to judgments and anxieties about the essential uselessness of the humanities, especially in an age when it is seemingly vitally important for scholars of literature, history and the arts to engage in "collaborative work with experimental scientists or even simply to make "intelligent use of the findings from empirical science.

As Bill Nye states, "People allude to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle all the time, and I think many of us who make those references don't have a solid grounding," he said.

"[84] Scholars, such as biologist Scott F. Gilbert, make the claim that it is in fact the increasing predominance, leading to exclusivity, of scientific ways of thinking that need to be tempered by historical and social context.