Humanities

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The philosopher Plato Roman copy of a work by Silanion for the Academia in Athens (c. 370 BC)

Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In
the renaissance, the term contrasted with divinityand referred to what is now called classics, the
main area of secular study in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently
contrasted with natural, and sometimes social, sciences as well as professional training.[1]
The humanities use methods that are primarily critical, or speculative, and have a significant
historical element[2]as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural
sciences,[2] yet, unlike the sciences, it has no central discipline.[3] The humanities include ancient and
modern languages, literature, philosophy, geography, history, religion,[4] art and musicology.
Scholars in the humanities are "humanity scholars" or humanists.[5] The term "humanist" also
describes the philosophical position of humanism, which some "antihumanist" scholars in the
humanities refuse. The Renaissance scholars and artists were also called humanists.
Some secondary schools offer humanities classes usually consisting of English literature, global
studies and art.
Human disciplines like history and cultural anthropology study subject matters that the experimental
method does not apply toand instead mainly use the comparative method[6] and comparative
research.

Contents
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1Fields
o 1.1Anthropology
o 1.2Archaeology
o 1.3Classics
o 1.4History
o 1.5Linguistics and languages
o 1.6Law and politics
 o 1.7Literature
o 1.8Performing arts
o 1.9Philosophy
o 1.10Religion
o 1.11Visual arts
2Origin of the term
3History
4Today
o 4.1Education and employment
o 4.2In the United States
5Philosophical history
o 5.1Citizenship and self-reflection
o 5.2Truth and meaning
o 5.3Pleasure, the pursuit of knowledge and scholarship
o 5.4Romanticization and rejection
6See also
7References
8External links

Fields[edit]
Anthropology[edit]
Main article: Anthropology
Anthropology is the holistic "science of humans", a science of the totality of human existence. The
discipline deals with the integration of different aspects of the social sciences, humanities
and human biology. In the twentieth century, academic disciplines have often been institutionally
divided into three broad domains. The natural sciences seek to derive general laws through
reproducible and verifiable experiments. The humanities generally study local traditions, through
their history, literature, music, and arts, with an emphasis on understanding particular individuals,
events, or eras. The social sciences have generally attempted to develop scientific methods to
understand social phenomena in a generalizable way, though usually with methods distinct from
those of the natural sciences.