Defining and Defending the Humanities (original) (raw)
2021, Zygon
The year 1667 saw the publication of the History of the Royal Society, a work produced by the prelate and preacher Thomas Sprat. Given that the Society first met in 1660 and had only received a formal Royal Charter and its official name in 1663, writing its history at this early juncture might seem to have been a little premature. Close consultation of Sprat's History, however, reveals that its true purpose was less to provide a chronological account of the founding and activities of the Society than to offer an apologetic defence of its methods and potential accomplishments. The fact that its author was better known for his literary abilities than his scientific achievements offers a further clue to the work's true purpose: it was a public relations exercise. Sprat's History was intended to help establish the legitimacy of a scientific enterprise that was considered by many to be politically suspect and of dubious social utility. Many of Sprat's contemporaries held that literary, theological, philosophical, philological, moral, and historical pursuits-activities that we would now classify among the humanities-was where the real action lay. By way of contrast, the new-fangled experimental sciences seemed to aim at crudely utilitarian goals and, even then, were judged to have been unsuccessful in accomplishing them.
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