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THE POLICY SCIENCES, SCIENCE POLICY, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF HUMANITIES POLICY
The relationship between science and society today is troubled. The first, more academic part of these troubles has played itself out in the literature of policy journals, while the second has engaged a wider audience including scientists, decision makers, and the general public. The first crisis is one of the policy sciences; the second is one of science policy.
How a New Field Could Help Save the Humanities
Unlike the history of science, the history of the humanities is not an academic discipline. This is surprising — humanists are among the most historically minded scholars. How can it be that humanists care about the history of everything except about their own? The situation is of course more subtle: There is historiography of philology, of history writing, of religious studies, of art history, of musicology, of literary studies, and more, but what is missing is an academic discipline that explores the history of the humanities together. For the "humanities" to be more than just an umbrella term, this bewildering gap in intellectual history must be remedied.
8 The Place of Humanities in a World of Science
The Humanities and the Modern Politics of Knowledge
Nobel Symposium 14 on "The Place of Value in a World of Facts" (1969) addressed the then current discussion of "world problems," thought to constitute a crisis for ideals of modernization. Renowned intellectuals from the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities addressed aspects of the crisis, with a group of student radicals commenting. The initiative had originated with the Swedish Academy that awards literary Nobel Prizes, but the humanities were marginalized in this context as a technocratic approach came to dominate. The students, critical of technocratic solutions, nevertheless found little use for traditional humanistic thinking. They represented a group that soon, by adopting "critical theory," would transform academic humanities.
Are the Sciences More Humaine than the Humanities
Are the Sciences More Humaine than the Humanities?, 2023
The natural sciences and their admirable applications in medicine have opened a wide range of assistance to people in distress who want to be healed of whatever impairs their lives.21 But the humanities must stand guard to help everyone who wants help to decide in freedom whether to “listen to the voices” or to silence them.
Rendering Humanities Sustainable
Humanities, 2011
Launching a journal intended to cover the entire humanities is certainly an audacious project, for two reasons at least. Firstly, this journal will be expected to cover much academic diversity, particularly by including the "social sciences." However, in this time of rampant overspecialization, perhaps it is precisely such wholeness and breadth of vision that could become a journal's strength. Secondly, since the viability of the humanities has been questioned from a number of perspectives it seems essential to meet these challenges by reinventing the discipline in response to issues raised-also a major task. It involves justifying the continuation of humanistic traditions. For this, humanists need to consider the nature of these challenges, understand and analyze them, and respond to them. It is therefore inevitable that a forward-looking, new journal in this discipline will deem it relevant to review these matters. The tensions between the natural sciences and the Geisteswissenschaften ("spiritual sciences") began with such scholars as Wilhelm Dilthey, who focused on human inner experience ("sovereignty of the will, responsibility for actions", etc. [1]). Instead of a scientific approach, the humanities have developed hermeneutical understanding of meaning in literature, culture, and history, which have brought them into conflict with rising postmodernism. There are vague references to creating "well rounded citizens" [2], apparently achievable by immersion in the great texts of Western culture. That would suggest that the most generous, good-hearted, and selfless people should be found among the higher echelons of humanities departments. Judging from the debates among such high-ranking humanist academics that does not seem to be the case. Moreover, as one humanist notes, "it is not the business of the humanities to save us", and the only honest answer to the question, of what use are the humanities, is none whatsoever [3]. For this he was rewarded with a torrent of 484 comments, which quasi-democratically define the issues faced by the discipline. Elsewhere, Stanley Fish clarifies that he is talking about humanities departments (an academic rather than cultural category), and "not about poets and philosophers and the effects they do or do not have in the world" [4]-an important clarification about academia's role. In Fish's words, the tiny effect a humanistic education might have
Palgrave Communications, 2019
What can society expect from the humanities? This question is even more pressing in the discussion on the contribution of the humanities in interdisciplinary research that supports public policy in dealing with societal issues. In the science-based policy community of-mostly natural-scientists, it is clear that there are limitations in natural science approaches to public policy. This community looks at the 'other' disciplines in academia, including the humanities, to overcome these limitations. An analysis of these limitations as actual limits, boundaries, and necessary bounds clarifies what science advisers need from the humanities: to contextualize decontextualized science advice. Unfortunately, there is little structural dialogue between the humanities and the science advice community. One reason for this is the idea held by the humanities that its public task is to unmask power structures rather than to support them. Another reason is the lack of institutional power to engage in practical discussions on policy problems. If the humanities really want to engage in a productive conversation on its societal relevance, they should develop the idea of social impact beyond that of knowledge utilization of specific and individual projects. For many fields of science application, there are institutions in which subject-specific research is combined with knowledge-intensive policy service. The humanities need institutions for applied humanities in order to develop perspectives that help society to cope with important societal challenges.