In the summer 2008 Wilson Quarterly, Wilfred McClay, SunTrust Chair of Humanities at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, calls us to consider once again the importance of study of the humanities, i.e. a collection of disciplines including literature and language, history, philosophy, comparative religion, ethics, history and theory of the arts – and related sub-disciplines and interdisciplinary realms of inquiry.

He provides a helpful account of the unique role of the humanities:

The distinctive task of the humanities, unlike the natural sciences and social sciences, is to grasp human things in human terms, without converting or reducing them to something else: not to physical laws, mechanical systems, biological drives, psychological disorders, social structures, and so on. The humanities attempt to understand the human condition from the inside, as it were, treating the human person as subject as well as object, agent as well as acted-upon.

Hence, the knowledge the humanities offers us is like no other, and cannot be replaced by scientific breakthroughs or superseded by advances in material knowledge.

It comes as no surprise that the humanities in higher education have suffered under the increased focus on technical proficiency and job skills preparation. Click to continue »

Two recent articles point to a phenomenon of our age, and particularly of the rising generation: the obsession with keeping one’s options open.

In the February 26 New York Times, John Tierney describes MIT professor Dan Ariely’s experiment for which he devised a computer game that paid real cash for players to look behind three doors on the screen (you can play the game yourself here). Each player is given a set number of clicks, and with those clicks he or she can switch rooms looking for higher pay-offs – although a further click is required to open the new door. The most rational strategy would be quickly to check out the three rooms and settle on the one offering the highest rewards. Click to continue »