The Humanities ... Literature ... Philosophy ... Religion
... Psychology ... Social Science ... Politics
The Humanities
Pinker discusses Enlightenment humanism (pp. 177-183) in his chapter on ‘The Humanitarian Revolution’.
‘Why are the humanities important? The answer is they are the means of keeping our society sane. ... it is the humanities and the social sciences that can talk about the malaise in society and explain the ways in which human beings behave to each other ... A good sort [of authority] is usually well informed; it is also honest and open. ... Humanities students gain with impressive depth the skills of questioning, critiquing, analysing, explaining, challenging ...’
The Times (2013) Why we need this antidote to madness. Good University Guide 2014. The best universities for the arts. Wednesday September 25. p. 3.
Diarmaid Macculloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford and Fellow of the British Academy.
Arguments for the value of the humanities refer to:
high tolerance of ambiguity;
truth claims based on coherence and rightness;
useful in an economic sense or beyond;
contribute to individual or national happiness;
worth studying for their own sake;
perform a gadfly function in democracy;
the claim that the humanities study the meaning-making practices of the culture,
focusing on interpretation and evaluation, with an indispensable element of
subjectivity. This claim has accrued supportive (but often incorrect) assumptions
about differences between the humanities, sciences, and social sciences;
the claim that the humanities are (laudably) uselessness, at a remove from accounts of
economic use value.
We could have a better public conversation if it incorporated forms of thinking that are called humanistic.
Small, H. talks to Reisz, M. (2013) Calm voice lauds humanities’ part in public conversation. The Times Higher Education. 26 September – 2 October. p. 16.
Small, H. (2013) The value of the Humanities. Oxford University Press.
http://www.english.ox.ac.uk/about-faculty/faculty-members/victorian-period/small-dr-helen
Literature
Pinker notes: ‘the philosophes of the Enlightenment extolled the way novels engaged a reader’s identification with and sympathetic concern for others’. Pinker quotes Diderot’s eulogy on Richardson: ‘his characters are taken from ordinary society ... the passions he depicts are those I feel in myself’ (p. 176).
‘These novels ... have a new distinctive feature: ‘inner space’. They concern not nations and people like the epic, but individuals, their subjectivity and their choices
... the novel as a form thinks and explores the complex but inescapable relationship between individuals and their social moral norms. Characters in early novels can behave like ideals ... wicked tricksters ... amoral picaros, trying to survive in a world where strict social structures work to exclude them. As morality (or how we understand it) changes and develops over time, so the novel changes and develops ... ‘different aspects of the human condition – heroically chaste love ... individual valour ... gentle sentiment ... deceit ... sudden surprising action ... the process of combining these genres into one ... Samuel Richardson blends all the subgenres to bring the ‘idealised character’ into ‘our everyday world’, where the narrative encompasses ‘the most trivial deed to the highest tragedy’, is ‘able to trace every nuance of speech, feeling, gesture and mood’, and can feel ‘the pulse of events’. ... accounts of idealism, irony, bitterness and empathy in the novel ... the ‘true deliverance is brought by art – not as a refuge from life, but as the only true access to its plenitude ...
...The philosophical approach Pavel takes puts him into dialogue with Martha Nussbaum, Alasdair Macintyre and Robert Pippin, who find in narrative fiction powerful resources for understanding and questioning ethics. His work both supplements and expands these sorts of debate as, here, the novel is not simply grist for a philosophical mill, but a developing, sinuous form of ethical enquiry in its own right. ...
... Pavel’s love of literature just beams out of each page.’
Eaglestone, R. (2013) We just couldn’t put it down. [A review of Pavel, 2013] The Times Higher Education. 26 September – 2 October. pp. 52-53.
Pavel, T. G. (2013) The lives of the novel: a history. Princeton University Press.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Pavel
Eaglestone, R. (2013) Contemporary fiction: a very short introduction.
http://personal.rhul.ac.uk/uhle/021/homepage.html
Burt, G. (2012-2013) Social Modelling:
Lives and histories – mathematical accounts
https://sites.google.com/site/gordonburtmathsocsci/home/lives-and-histories
A foundational mathematical account of a specific complex social reality: conflict in ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’
http://www.emeraldinsight.com/journals.htm?articleid=17073065
Note 20 Jane Austen: attachment, disagreement and escalation
Philosophy ...
Pinker notes: ‘today the historian Lynn Hunt, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum, the psychologists Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley, among others, have championed the reading of fiction as an empathy expander and a force toward humanitarian progress’ (p. 589).
Eaglestone also cites the following:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Nussbaum;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alasdair_MacIntyre;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_B._Pippin.
... history ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynn_Hunt
... psychology ...
Raymond Mar and Keith Oatley:
http://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/chaning_our_minds
Reading literary fiction improves theory of mind:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2013/10/02/science.1239918
Theory of mind:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_mind;
http://www.newschool.edu/nssr/faculty.aspx?id=16180
The Times (2013) Good literature can help you read what people really think. Friday October 4. p. 15.
http://www.newschool.edu/pressroom/pressreleases/2013/CastanoKidd.htm
The New York Times International Weekly in collaboration with The Observer (2013) Chekhov’s surprising benefits. Sunday October 13. pp. 1, 4.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Humphrey
Social Science
Burt, G. (2010) Conflict, complexity and mathematical social science. Bingley: Emerald
http://books.emeraldinsight.com/display.asp?K=9781849509725&cur=USD
Politics
How the vote changes: percentage change, proportional change or change in z-score?
How do people value the main political parties?
Basic concepts: electorate and voters; percentages and z-scores; change and needed change; swing and flow; a set of constituencies
The cumulative distribution of rebelliousness (early rough draft)
The Obama vote in 2012: the spatial network hierarchy
What can a loss of strength gradient look like? Competition over space and time for people’s opinions