put in the detailed footnote info here cue for a same document link here cue for a different document link hereThe Humanities
In December of 2002, I visited a number of administrators, staff and Professors at Brandon University and asked them for their perspectives on the "reflective/creative" emphasis in the Humanities vis-a-vis the other areas of knowledge in the University. Perhaps some of their own words will give a composite flavor to what I heard of the essence of the Humanities as an area of knowledge in the University, the one I came up through.[]
- "Creativity and the creative process are common to all disciplines," B.U. President Lou Visentin noted, "as they all utilize the process of information, incubation, and illumination." He added, " 'Story' is also central to all disciplines, only in English it is more obvious".
- "There is a long history of recognition of the creative in Music" Dean of Music Glen Corothers noted.
- Dr. John Blakie, Professor of English said "We all want the same thing to happen theoretically as an end result but there is an intellectual war about how you go about it empirically or esthetically...and that tension goes back to Plato."
- "Acting, painting, and performing a musical composition are all doing the same interpretive activity, and all three rest on a foundation of scholarship", Dr. Peter Hordern Former Dean of Arts, said. "For example, take the performer who scours the archives for original manuscripts and possible notations and additions which might inform his interpretation."
- Archivist and Historian Tom Mitchell, said "I try to talk about the language people used as a cultural artifact of the time. It results in a window into their sensibilities....Photographic images can be read like a landscape. Suppose I don't have letters just photos. It restricts us, but it gives us a bit of an idea and access."
- Education Professor, Dr. Robin Enns, pulled out a recent Thesis from the University of Regina, entitled "Country Ballads and Lyrics". When I opened it, it was a beautiful layout of exactly what the title said. He explained. "In aesthetic research, one of the tenets is not to tell the reader how to interpret the research. Just give the text and let people be invited into them. Present something for them to respond to...an invitation to connect. With one student, we had Dr. Jim Hare from Biology on the committee because the student was working with an extended biological metaphor. We had a delightful time."
- History Professor Dr. Jim Naylor, cautioned against both the public opinion orientation of much of the social sciences, because people's words and actions are notoriously different, and the post-modern cultural-theory approach because it is focused on discourse and how language is constructed. Better, he said, to be grounded in reality. Look for what people actually did..."public opinion is always more conservative than people's actions".
- Philosophy Professor Dr. May Yoe noted, "Here is where Humanities training helps: to think....To me the Social Sciences are concerned a great deal with the future and therefore are very boring. It has too many definitive answers, especially when working with quantitative methods. In Humanities, we know there is not one set of answers.... There must be more examination of presuppositions....It is much more creative, and relies on the imagination much more.... The Logical Positivists wanted Philosophy to move towards a more scientific method, but it resulted in material that was cognitively meaningful but emotively meaningless."
- Philosophy Professor, Dr. Phil Gosselin said that in the end the Social Sciences are concerned about "formalizing rough generalizations, and understanding and predicting behavior. The Humanities, and Philosophy in particular, is about sitting and thinking about issues. Philosophy asks the most basic questions in various areas of enquiry...what makes actions right...what is the intrinsic value of life...all of which are all central to rural development: ethics and business, ethics and the environment...
"What is objective thinking...is it even possible...how do we fight our biases (even as philosophers) to get at the truth...should we seek to overcome them to get at the truth of the matter...can we overcome them?
"In Philosophy a good part of it is careful analysis of key concepts and clarity about what the battles are about....arguments for and against fundamental issues in ethics, for example business and the environment. We try to get clarity because it helps. Then we weigh up the arguments: which is on a sound footing, which is best supported?...
"It is about critical reflection, about language and arguments that use language. Some say it's just semantics. But if it is semantics then it is a thing to address. For example, in the abortion debate are we talking about a 'person', a 'human being' or a 'potential person'? Terms make a difference. If one can clear it up, it contributes to the debate, and people don't always appreciate it. The real benefit of doing Philosophy is developing skill in thinking about controversial questions and complex situations. There is lots of that in life. Practice makes for doing it well or improves it....Rural Development should recommend some courses for its students."
- Psychologist, Bruce Sarbit of Student Services chuckled at my question and noted an extended discourse he was in the midst of at that time, with a person who raised the question, "If one is a materialist, what does one do with the humanities?".
He went on to say, "art - phenomenology - is the method of the Humanities. The analytical logic of Russell, Whitehead and logical positivism did not work. Phenomenological - introspective - activities are what [enables] us to express the subjective component in life. Science uses the Calculus, Social Sciences use statistics and Humanities uses introspection as a methodology. With each, we are brought to different kinds of things. Some matter and methods work best together." He noted the two James brothers Henry with his novels and William with his psychology and their two approaches to community, one expressing it, and the other analyzing it, and that it would make a great assignment to write about the conscious in the different styles.
"Solomon Rushti puts himself in other people's heads. Humanities does this - 'how would x deal with this?'...Can we experience the community the way the members of it do...What do we do to community by studying it? Social Science says, 'It is just that way'. Humanities asks, 'how do we influence what we see?'.
When asked, he noted that because photography has a concrete grounded side and a subjective side, it "spans the objective and the subjective in a marvelous way. Always people go deeper - their subjective explorations. Look at how it [i.e. photography] touches one as opposed to the quantitative which does not encompass depth and stays too surface and doesn't touch one." He went on to describe A.G. Sebald's novel Austerlitz in which the author blended text and photographs of his journey back to the home-town from which he had been exiled as a child with only faint memories of a train station and a few other buildings. He said that when one reads the book and then encounters the photographs of the actual memory-scenes, one is taken into the author's experience in ways that only using words would fail to do. He reflected on the possibility of such an approach to get inside the "exile" experience of the farm folks and people of small towns who have had to leave for the city and a different way of life. Such a "study" would be more of a humanities approach to rural community life than a social science one, and that it would bring the subjective dimension to the foreground more than the objective, a dimension which is usually overlooked or downplayed in community studies, but which is perhaps closer to the critical essence of what is important to the people caught up in what is going on out there.
Bruce concluded that some people want to keep the disciplines separate, but that he doesn't. "I love the interplay of the disciplines. That is where the fun is, on the borders. Multiplying perspectives results in a new shape to what we know....To see different perspectives, we need to be open to when to close a focus on our methodology of choice."
Disciplines in the Humanities At B.U.
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