This chapter characterizes History as an interpretive discipline, one in which conclusions are drawn by applying critical thinking to the available evidence, rather than one that aims to achieve actionable results from experimental or observational results. It points out that History aims not at reproducible and definitive outcomes but at broadening and deepening inquiry. It seeks to define what kinds of questions historians most value, questions that contribute to and enable such deepening and widening inquiry. Finally, this chapter discusses in greater depth the methodological and epistemological division introduced in the Introduction, between those more attracted to the historicist tradition examined in Chapter 1 and those more attracted to the methods, aims, and epistemological assumptions of social-science theory and of critical social theory. The chapter discusses both the strengths and weaknesses of these competing traditions and the pedagogical benefit of introducing students to both – the unique intellectual flexibility that the study of the discipline of History can cultivate.

This chapter defines the field of history by examining both the topics it investigates and some of its long-standing and unique epistemological and methodological assumptions. It points out the unique breadth of the discipline, which has always taken the whole of human experience as its object of study. It emphasizes the holism of the discipline – that is, History’s consistent interest not in particular parts or aspects of that experience, but in the interactions between different aspects of human societies. It examines the historicist tradition within the discipline – the fundamental assumption that every aspect of human life is conditioned by its broad historical context. And it explores the way in which that fundamental assumption has contributed to a primarily idiographic epistemological position – an interest in the analysis of the particular and specific, rather than the general or universal.

This chapter reassesses Bradbury’s fictionalization of the academic world as a multifaceted exploration of the ironies of a value-free society and of literature’s responses to dehumanization, from the 1950’s “Age of Anxiety” to the postmodern vanishing of the author and its much-awaited re-materialization. From the ambivalence of liberal humanism in Eating People Is Wrong to the bitter satire of sociology as a threat to free will and accountability in The History Man, from the caricature of intellectual arrogance in Doctor Criminale and Mensonge to the problematization of anti-foundational epistemologies that legitimize interpretation in To the Hermitage, Bradbury’s novels of ideas dissect the institutional conditions of knowledge in democratic societies. They offer us not only a humorous outlook on postwar England but also a critical lens to examine the role of the humanities and the mission of academic institutions on a broader scale, issues that continue to be timely.

This book speaks to all those with an interest in the question of the human in its relation to the non-human. More specifically, it illustrates how the ancient world mobilized concepts of ‘the animal’ and ‘animality’ to conceive of the human in a variety of ways. To this end, it offers ten essayistic interventions into ways of ‘thinking the human’ that reach from antiquity to the present in the ultimate aim to challenge our understanding of who we really are.

Social work stands for the values of humanity. Such a statement would go unchallenged by social workers throughout the world. Yet in this chapter we consider the values of humanity in some detail, recognising that they are both complex and contested, and that humanity is not to be idealised but can be brutally destructive. In pursuing this discussion, we show how a deeper and wider exploration of humanity can be an important source of inspiration for creative social work and can enhance social work’s advocacy of the values of humanity in the contemporary context, where much that seemed to be settled has become unsettled and where people often feel less like rational decision-making beings optimising their wellbeing and more isolated, bewildered and uncertain in a world of paradox and confusion.

Humanities scholarship is hard to classify as knowledge because it normally takes a form that is quite different from scientific research, which has become nearly synonymous with knowledge. Our popular picture of scientific knowledge is a based on a caricature — the Scientific Method — which misrepresents the nature of scientific inquiry in a way that makes it look fundamentally at odds with the tenor of the humanities. When we look at how scientific knowledge actually develops, however, we find that both the process by which this occurs and the structure of the scholarly communities that oversee it are surprisingly similar to those that have defined the humanities since antiquity. This book argues for a kind of knowledge — disciplinary knowledge — that is characterized by certain social practices surrounding the production of knowledge. Both the humanities and the natural sciences routinely create disciplinary knowledge.

Chapter 1 reconstructs the conceptual history of tact as a social, ethical, and aesthetic category. Starting out with Voltaire’s 1769 definition that marks tact’s fundamental paradigm shift from a sense of feeling to a form of sociability, I reconstruct the word’s ensuing career as a key concept in 19th- and 20th-century pedagogical, philosophical, and literary discourse. I discuss tact’s history within the context of the demise of the ancien régime and the rise of the bourgeois subject, reflecting on a variety of different historical and philosophical explanations (Elias, Adorno, Foucault). I reconstruct how and why, around 1800, tact turns into a key philosophical term, depicting an intuitive form of empirical judgement (Kant). I show how, in the second half of the 19th century, tact, understood as an individual deviation from normative structures, came to occupy a key position in the method dispute between the humanities and the natural sciences (Helmholtz). I conclude by reflecting on how psychological tact went on to become a key category in modern and contemporary hermeneutics, uniting the otherwise antagonistic work of scholars incl. Adorno, Gadamer, Barthes, Felski, and Macé.

A comparison of disciplines is helpful for teaching creativity to identify similarities and differences in the creative process. A challenge for all disciplines is to create a balance between teaching higher-level abilities, such as creativity, and the lower-level technical skills required by the discipline. But there are also differences among disciplines. Scientific training emphasizes avoiding mistakes so it is more risk-aversive than training in the arts in which taking risks is often encouraged. Research on science and mathematics learning includes evaluating the effects of exposing preservice elementary teachers to multiple representations, measuring scientific creativity in elementary school students, identifying competencies for scientific reasoning in junior high school, and designing instruction on complex systems at all levels in the curriculum. TRIZ, an acronym for the Russian phrase ‘theory of inventive problem solving’, has influenced the design and evaluation of curricula for engineering students.

Abstract: This chapter addresses the tension between truth and social cohesion. Since all stories are interpretation of some event or behavior, the examined life is always an interpretation of an interpretation. But the interpretation of one’s own national history is not of some distant object: It is of the self, and it has a purpose – to open up and explore the possibilities that the past offers in the present for the future. This chapter examines the qualities of a good interpretation and role of the humanities in shaping it. I show how progress in interpretation is possible and argue for a dialogical view of interpretation where meanings evolve as contexts change, as new knowledge becomes available, and as the implications of different possible interpretations become clearer.

Ethical quandaries – such as justice and equity for under-represented communities, treatment of animals in laboratory and field research, and editing the genomes of plants, animals, and humans – are becoming ever more insistent in socio-environmental research. Accordingly, socio-environmental research requires that natural and social scientists become conversant with the humanities and that humanists actively engage, in accessible terms, the conceptual and ethical concerns arising in the sciences. Research methods in the humanities differ – where scholars begin with a thesis instead of a hypothesis – from those in the natural and social sciences. While the methodological differences between research in the humanities and the sciences render interdisciplinary cooperation and even communication between these two broad types of inquiry difficult, this section draws attention to the important contributions that ethical, religous, and historical approaches have made to understanding the reciprocal relationships between society and environment. These contributions range from scholars such as Aldo Leopold, Lynn White, and William Cronon to Vandana Shiva, Leonardo Boff, and Gregory Cajete.