I'm not sure there is any terminology that can't be griped about in these terms--any given meaning of a word excludes other possible meanings of it. If "the humanities" = "all knowledge" then first off, we'd just use the word "knowledge" or "scholarship", and second off, it wouldn't mean anything at that point anyway because nobody would want to be excluded from it. (Roughly the same way that everyone and everything wants to be inside "liberal arts" when it's understood to be a pleasing, anodyne, description of education.)
"Humanities" is basically a Renaissance concept that a new wave of modestly secular intellectuals used to underscore their secularism and therefore often actually included 'natural history', e.g. early modern European science. When science started being understood to mean something other than natural history in that sense, I think the people self-naming as scientists were as responsible for seceding from 'humanities' as 'humanists' were for kicking them out of the category--the roots of that moment are really in the intellectual rise of positivism, which touched on more than just the natural sciences. (Hence in the 20th C., you've had moments inside of ostensibly humanistic disciplines where practicioners have thrown their hat in on doing a "scientific" version of that discipline.)
Oh, sure, all definitions are exclusive. I find this one particularly insufferable, though, because a fair number of pompous windbags will very explicitly conflate "the humanities" with the species in the usual sense, and use that to dismiss science as not a part of "the essence of humanity." I have more than once had to call that out in faculty meetings, and it doesn't stick.
I also have a problem with the common usage of "liberal arts," but that's at least just confusing a collection of specialties with an educational method, not implicitly making me an alien.
I think the academic humanities--in that sense of secular thinking about culture and society--has a fair claim to being present in many, if not all past societies. Certainly art, broadly speaking, seems present in almost any society we might think about. Religion and philosophy, construed broadly, similarly.
Is 'science' equally universal? If we mean "thinking about the nature of the world and the universe, gathering information about the world, applying thinking about the world and the universe to making things that then enhance the human ability to manipulate and interact with the world", yes. But for one I'm not sure it's the same thing even at that level of abstraction as thinking about society or culture. It is sometimes--there are many past societies that didn't made the categorical distinctions that we inherit from Western thought between technology and art, culture and nature, human beings and the non-human. But if we're going to point at them and say "see, science is too part of the humanities", then we really should stop using the words "science" and "humanities" altogether, because we're reaching for something else entirely. If science means "the form of knowledge that is produced by using the scientific method", then it really doesn't mean the same thing as "the humanities" and vice-versa, and it is tied more specifically to the intellectual and institutional history of European societies after 1500 or so.
It would help if these Humanities guys knew more about history and sociology of science and mathematics. Proof is impossible for science and very difficult for much of mathematics. So both are human endeavors where networks of people accomplish the advancement.
Certainly agree that divides between the sciences and the humanities are often unwarranted, but there are crucial differences that may be rushed past here. Actually, I think my concern is more about lumping the arts in with other humanities like history and world languages. History and world language, like the sciences (human and natural), have gone through "investigation, testing [of a sort], and refinement". But, I see the arts, both the practice and study thereof, being largely outside of testing and refinement. An individual artist may "test out" ideas or refine their craft, but the arts do not rely on testing and refinement in the sense used in the hypothetico-deductive model of science. I think I agree with the idea that art "induce[s] a particular subjective experience in another person", so long as we emphasize that the particular experience of the audience is independent of the artist's particular intention to the extent it exists and is known. And so it is here where the distinction between humanities - really just the arts - and the sciences must be made. As John Ziman tells us, the goal of science is "consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field." Art cannot have any such goal. All the best.
Well, you can take solace in your higher paychecks in the sciences. And I'll tell you what -- I'll take the problem of feeling excluded from the concept of "the humanities" over the honest belief that a lot of scientists have that only they conduct real research. And then the warping effect that those in the fields that receive grants -- the sciences -- believe they are doing the most measurable research, because too many administrators, ninnies that they are, believe research = $$$$$. Give me nomenclature qualms every day over the real, actual manifestation of disciplinary pissing contests that subject "the humanities" -- no problem with the teminology when you're under-funding us! -- to second-class status.
For the record, thanks to New York's new salary transparency law, I can say with confidence that the starting salaries we offer new hires in physics are exactly the same as the starting salaries we offer not-STEM folks. Computer Science hires get more, but the physicists, biologists, and chemists are starting in the same place as historians and artists. (I believe there's also a premium for Econ and engineering faculty, but I haven't seen any of their ads yet.)
I'm not sure there is any terminology that can't be griped about in these terms--any given meaning of a word excludes other possible meanings of it. If "the humanities" = "all knowledge" then first off, we'd just use the word "knowledge" or "scholarship", and second off, it wouldn't mean anything at that point anyway because nobody would want to be excluded from it. (Roughly the same way that everyone and everything wants to be inside "liberal arts" when it's understood to be a pleasing, anodyne, description of education.)
"Humanities" is basically a Renaissance concept that a new wave of modestly secular intellectuals used to underscore their secularism and therefore often actually included 'natural history', e.g. early modern European science. When science started being understood to mean something other than natural history in that sense, I think the people self-naming as scientists were as responsible for seceding from 'humanities' as 'humanists' were for kicking them out of the category--the roots of that moment are really in the intellectual rise of positivism, which touched on more than just the natural sciences. (Hence in the 20th C., you've had moments inside of ostensibly humanistic disciplines where practicioners have thrown their hat in on doing a "scientific" version of that discipline.)
Oh, sure, all definitions are exclusive. I find this one particularly insufferable, though, because a fair number of pompous windbags will very explicitly conflate "the humanities" with the species in the usual sense, and use that to dismiss science as not a part of "the essence of humanity." I have more than once had to call that out in faculty meetings, and it doesn't stick.
I also have a problem with the common usage of "liberal arts," but that's at least just confusing a collection of specialties with an educational method, not implicitly making me an alien.
I think the academic humanities--in that sense of secular thinking about culture and society--has a fair claim to being present in many, if not all past societies. Certainly art, broadly speaking, seems present in almost any society we might think about. Religion and philosophy, construed broadly, similarly.
Is 'science' equally universal? If we mean "thinking about the nature of the world and the universe, gathering information about the world, applying thinking about the world and the universe to making things that then enhance the human ability to manipulate and interact with the world", yes. But for one I'm not sure it's the same thing even at that level of abstraction as thinking about society or culture. It is sometimes--there are many past societies that didn't made the categorical distinctions that we inherit from Western thought between technology and art, culture and nature, human beings and the non-human. But if we're going to point at them and say "see, science is too part of the humanities", then we really should stop using the words "science" and "humanities" altogether, because we're reaching for something else entirely. If science means "the form of knowledge that is produced by using the scientific method", then it really doesn't mean the same thing as "the humanities" and vice-versa, and it is tied more specifically to the intellectual and institutional history of European societies after 1500 or so.
Yes -- Human as opposed to Divine rather than vs. scientific...
Still makes it pretty nonsensical today though.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literae_humaniores
Or maybe science is the new study of the Eternal in any case?
It would help if these Humanities guys knew more about history and sociology of science and mathematics. Proof is impossible for science and very difficult for much of mathematics. So both are human endeavors where networks of people accomplish the advancement.
Certainly agree that divides between the sciences and the humanities are often unwarranted, but there are crucial differences that may be rushed past here. Actually, I think my concern is more about lumping the arts in with other humanities like history and world languages. History and world language, like the sciences (human and natural), have gone through "investigation, testing [of a sort], and refinement". But, I see the arts, both the practice and study thereof, being largely outside of testing and refinement. An individual artist may "test out" ideas or refine their craft, but the arts do not rely on testing and refinement in the sense used in the hypothetico-deductive model of science. I think I agree with the idea that art "induce[s] a particular subjective experience in another person", so long as we emphasize that the particular experience of the audience is independent of the artist's particular intention to the extent it exists and is known. And so it is here where the distinction between humanities - really just the arts - and the sciences must be made. As John Ziman tells us, the goal of science is "consensus of rational opinion over the widest possible field." Art cannot have any such goal. All the best.
Well, you can take solace in your higher paychecks in the sciences. And I'll tell you what -- I'll take the problem of feeling excluded from the concept of "the humanities" over the honest belief that a lot of scientists have that only they conduct real research. And then the warping effect that those in the fields that receive grants -- the sciences -- believe they are doing the most measurable research, because too many administrators, ninnies that they are, believe research = $$$$$. Give me nomenclature qualms every day over the real, actual manifestation of disciplinary pissing contests that subject "the humanities" -- no problem with the teminology when you're under-funding us! -- to second-class status.
For the record, thanks to New York's new salary transparency law, I can say with confidence that the starting salaries we offer new hires in physics are exactly the same as the starting salaries we offer not-STEM folks. Computer Science hires get more, but the physicists, biologists, and chemists are starting in the same place as historians and artists. (I believe there's also a premium for Econ and engineering faculty, but I haven't seen any of their ads yet.)