Thursday, June 07, 2012

Arts and Sciences

The liberal arts are not social sciences. While the social sciences attempt to know about social life, the humanities are trying to understand the human condition. The difference may appear subtle but it is quite obvious when we look at the consequences for research practices. In social science, research is shaped by theories and methods, i.e., by perspectives that guide the attention of researchers toward particular objects and approaches that structure their activities in particular ways. The social sciences gain access to their objects by generating data, which they then subject to analysis. In the humanities, by contrast, research (or what is much more accurately called "scholarship") is guided by a comprehensive style, i.e., a way of reading and writing, as well as thinking and feeling, about what it means to be human. They do not really have an object. Where a science tries to overcome our ignorance, an art seeks to improve our ability to imagine. The only relelevant "data set" here is the imagery that is made available by our literature. And the only relevant form of analysis is to think on it seriously in the light of experience.

4 comments:

Andrew Shields said...

This strikes me as an absolutely central point. While I'm sure some would argue (*) with the way you distinguish the liberal arts and the social sciences, a careful distinction between them has to be made (about methods but also about the objects involved and how they demand to be studied).

(*) Some, but not me!

Keith O'Rourke said...

Andrew: You might wish to look at JG Gardin's logicist analysis - perhaps Frege with access to computers were academic prose is set out in runnable code. For instance, one his grad student had the program write a paper like Levi-Straus which Levi-Straus thought was one on his papers when he saw it. So it clarified, more or less, the writing process in the humanites as well as some science - so that they could be compared.

Andrew Shields said...

Is that Jean-Claude Gardin, as in "Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems"?

Keith O'Rourke said...

Yes, sorry for the last rushed post, don't really have time this week. If you need further info k_orourke-at-rogers.com