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The humanities are a group of academic subjects united by a commitment to studying aspects of the Human Condition and a qualitative approach that generally prevents a single paradigm from coming to define any discipline. The humanities are usually distinguished from the Social Sciences and the Natural Science s and include subjects such as the Classics , Languages , Literature , Music , Philosophy , the Performing Arts , Religion and the Visual Arts . Other subjects, at times included as humanities in some parts of the world, include Archaeology , Area Studies , Communications , Cultural Studies and History , although these are often regarded as social sciences, elsewhere. BRANCHES Religion and philosophy Most historians trace the beginnings of Religious Belief to the Neolithic Period. Most religious belief during this time period consisted of worship of a Mother Goddess , a Sky Father , and also worship of the Sun and the Moon as deities. (''see also Sun Worship '') New Philosophies and Religions arose in both east and west, particularly around the 6th Century BCE . Over time, a great variety of religions developed around the world, with Hinduism and Buddhism in India , Zoroastrianism in Persia being some of the earliest major faiths. In the east, three schools of thought were to dominate Chinese thinking until the modern day. These were Taoism , Legalism , and Confucianism . The Confucian tradition, which would attain predominance, looked not to the force of law, but to the power and example of tradition for political morality. In the west, the Greek philosophical tradition, represented by the works of Plato and Aristotle , was diffused throughout Europe and the Middle East by the conquests of Alexander Of Macedon in the 4th Century BCE . ''', Christianity , Islam , and the Bahá'í Faith , and comprises about half of the world's religious adherents. The arts The Arts are usually considered as part of the humanities. These include visual arts such as Painting and Sculpture , as well as performing arts such as Theatre and Dance . Other humanities such as language are sometimes considered to be part of the arts, for example as the Language Arts . The great traditions in Art have a foundation in the art of one of six ancient civilizations:
Ancient Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (i.e. Zeus ' thunderbolt). In Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages , the dominance of the church insisted on the expression of biblical and not material truths. The Renaissance saw the return to valuation of the material world, and this shift is reflected in art forms, which show the corporeality of the human body, and the three-dimensional reality of landscape. Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan. Religious Islam ic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead. The physical and rational certaintiesdepicted by the 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by , {Link without Title} but also by unprecedented technological development. Increasing Global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art. The classics See Also: Classics The classics, in the Western academic tradition, refer to cultures of Classical Antiquity , namely the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Classical study was formerly considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities, but the classics declined in importance during the 20th Century . Nevertheless, the influence of classical ideas in humanities such as philosophy and literature remain strong. Languages and literature The study of language itself ( Lingustics ) and the use of the native language form a major part of the humanities. Since many areas of the humanities such as literature, history and philosophy are based on language, changes in language can have a profound effect on the other humanities. Literature, covering a variety of uses of language including Prose forms (such as the Novel ), Poetry and Drama , also lies at the heart of the modern humanities curriculum. College-level programs in a Foreign Language usually include study of important works of the literature in that language, as well as the language itself (grammar, vocabulary, etc.). Music See Also: Music Music as an academic discipline mainly focuses on two career paths, music Performance (focused on the Orchestra and the Concert Hall ) and Music Education (training music teachers). Students learn to play Instruments , but also study Music Theory , Musicology History Of Music and Composition . In the liberal arts tradition, music is also used to broaden skills of non-musicians by teaching skills such as concentration and listening. HISTORY OF THE HUMANITIES In the West, the study of the humanities can be traced to ancient Greece, as the basis of a broad education for citizens. During Roman times, the concept of the seven Liberal Arts evolved, involving Grammar , Rhetoric and Logic (the Trivium ), along with Arithmetic , Geometry , Astronomia and Music (the Quadrivium ). These subjects formed the bulk of Medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing." These sections originally corresponded to Astrological Concepts , namely being the seven traditional Astrological planets. A typical course of study began with grammar, ruled by the fastest planet, the Moon , and culminated with Saturn , governing Astronomia , which included both Astronomy and Astrology . A major shift occurred during the Renaissance, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to be studied rather than practised, with a corresponding shift away from the traditional fields into areas such as literature and history. In the 20th century, this view was in turn challenged by the Postmodernist movement, which sought to redefine the humanities in more Egalitarian terms suitable for a Democratic society. THE HUMANITIES TODAY Humanities in the United States Many American colleges and universities believe in the notion of a broad "liberal arts education", which places an emphasis on all college students studying the humanities in addition to their specific area of study. Prominent proponents of liberal arts in the United States have included Mortimer J. Adler and E.D. Hirsch . The 1980 United States Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities described the humanities in its report, ''The Humanities in American Life'': Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world in which irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason. Meanwhile, there are many changes and debates occurring today in the humanities: Questioning distinctions The very concept of the ‘humanities’ as a class or kind, distinct from the ’sciences’, has come under repeated attack in the twentieth century. T.S. Kuhn ’s '' The Structure Of Scientific Revolutions '' argued that the forces driving scientific progress often have less to do with objective inference from unbiased observation than with much more value-laden sociological and cultural factors. More recently, Richard Rorty has argued that the distinction between the sciences and the humanities is harmful to both pursuits, placing the former on an undeserved pedestal and condemning the latter to irrationality. Rorty’s position requires a wholesale rejection of such traditional philosophical distinctions as those between appearance and reality, subjective and objective, replacing them with what he endorses as a new ‘fuzziness’. This leads to a kind of pragmatism where" the oppositions between the humanities, the arts, and the sciences, might gradually fade away... In this situation, ‘the humanities’ would no longer think of themselves as such...." Modernism and postmodernism In the United States, the late 20th Century saw a challenge to the "elitism" of the humanities, which Edward Said has characterized as a "conservative philosophy of gentlemanly refinement, or sensibility." Such Postmodernists argue that the humanities should go beyond the study of " Dead White Males " to include work by women and people of color, and without religious bias. {Link without Title} The French philosopher Michel Foucault has been a very influential part of this movement, stating in ''The Order of Things'' that "we can study only individuals, not human nature." However some in the humanities believe that such changes may be detrimental, as they lead to Moral Relativism and the concept that one person's interpretation is as good as any other. The literary critic Denis Donoghue suggests that modern criticism reduces the rich symbolism of a play like Macbeth to a simplistic "find the villain", with Lady Macbeth regarded as the victim of bloody-minded, power-mad masculine society; the result is said to be what E. D. Hirsch Jr. refers to as declining Cultural Literacy . The modernist considers that there is a canon of "great works" in literature and art which have an inherent quality, but the postmodernist argues that such ideas of greatness have been heavily biased by gender and culture. The modernist advocates Close Reading of a few works in literature, but the postmodernist generally favors more "extensive reading" of a large variety of works. National institutions President (NEH) in 1969. NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the United States government dedicated to supporting research, education, preservation, and public programs in the humanities. NEH facilitated the creation of State Humanities Councils in the 56 U.S. states and territories. Each council operates independently, defining the "humanities" in relationship to the disciplines, subjects, and values valued in the regions they serve. Councils give grant funds to individuals, scholars, and nonprofit organizations dedicated to the humanities in their region. Councils also offer diverse progams and services that respond to the needs of their communities and according to their own definitions of the humanities. The humanities in the digital age Language and literature are considered to lie at the heart of the humanities, so the impact of electronic communication is of great concern to those in the field. The immediacy of modern technology and the internet speeds up communication, but may threaten "deferred" forms of communication such as literature and "dumb down" language. The library is also changing rapidly as bookshelves are replaced by computer terminals. The humanities will have to adapt rapidly to these changes if they are to remain relevant. TRIVIA
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