All posts tagged humanities

Humanities as hobbies?

January 19, 2009

A commenter on the latest Stanley Fish blog post “The Last Professor” tries to make lemons out of lemonade out of lemons:

I also think that those who love the [humanities] enough to engage in arcane arguments in journals will continue to do so, whether paid or not by universities. We’re therefore looking at a future full of independent, hobbyist scholars — not the worst of all possible worlds. A return to the world of the gentleman-scientist, a reversal of the halcyon days when all the funding went to theology and fledgling geologists roamed the hills on their breaks from work as masters of divinity and grammar-school teachers. The world moves on, and so can we.

Not sure how I feel about that…

Science Times roundup

May 28, 2008

All three above-the-fold cover stories in the NYT Science Times this week hit on different aspects of what’s becoming a major interest of mine – the interface between the harder sciences and more right-brained aspects of being human.

The main article is about mindfulness meditation being used in therapy. I find this interesting, but the article points out that the science supporting whether it is beneficial is pretty thin at this point, and there’s a risk of it becoming a fad.

Next is an article about a new curriculum at Binghamton University (NY) aimed at putting the sciences and humanities in dialogue. I was not encouraged by the inane statement by one of the creators that “There are more similarities than differences between the humanities and the sciences,” but otherwise it looks very good.

But perhaps most intriguing was an article on a woman who is marketing a placebo for parents to give to their children when all else fails Continue reading →