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2016 | Book

The Ups and Downs of the Humanities Read chapter Read first chapter

Why We Need the Humanities

Life Science, Law and the Common Good

Author: Donald Drakeman

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK

Part of: Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" , Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

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About this book

An entrepreneur and educator highlights the surprising influence of humanities scholarship on biomedical research and civil liberties. This spirited defence urges society to support the humanities to obtain continued guidance for public policy decisions, and challenges scholars to consider how best to fulfil their role in serving the common good.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter
1. The Ups and Downs of the Humanities
Abstract
The cartoon cover of a 1935 issue of The Princeton Tiger humor magazine showed Depression-era students lined up at their graduation ceremony to be handed a loaf of bread with every liberal-arts diploma.1 A few months later, the university’s alumni magazine reported on students’ shifting academic interests in a table titled ‘Trend Away from the Humanities’.2 Students concentrating their studies in those disciplines were down by nearly a third from the go-go years of the ‘roaring twenties’.
Donald Drakeman
2. The Humanities and the Future of the Life Sciences
Abstract
Philosophy and theology may once have been known as the queens of the sciences, but, today, we often look to science and technology for answers to the ‘big questions’. Physicists have been on the trail of the God particle; biologists regularly dazzle the media with the discovery of one molecular Holy Grail or another; and the neuroscientists are competing with the economists to decide whether moral choices are genetically hard-wired or rationally calculated.
Donald Drakeman
3. The Humanities and the Law
Abstract
During US Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan’s 2009 confirmation hearings, Senator Jon Kyle asked:
[T]he president … said that in hard cases, adherence to precedent and rules of construction and interpretation will only get you through the first 25 miles [of a marathon]…. He says the critical ingredient in those cases is what is in the judge’s heart …. [D]o you agree…?
Donald Drakeman
4. Toolboxes, Preferences and the Humanities
Abstract
So far, the focus of this book has been on showing that we—all of us, as in ‘We the People’—need the humanities. We need the depth of learning and the critical thinking found in the best humanities scholarship. In particular, we need that scholarship to be able to help us understand and deal with practical issues that affect the economy and other important elements of our daily lives. Some of those issues are the ones I have described in the areas of healthcare and civil liberties, which are likely to remain important and controversial well into the future. At the same time, these questions stand for the broader class of policy issues where a small number of powerful people— generally, high-level policy-makers appointed by our elected political leaders—will decide how the rest of us will live.
Donald Drakeman
5. The Humanities and the Common Good
Abstract
Consider, for a moment, the contrasting approaches to the value of the humanities evident in these two vignettes.
Donald Drakeman
Backmatter
Metadata
Title
Why We Need the Humanities
Author
Donald Drakeman
Copyright Year
2016
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Electronic ISBN
978-1-137-49747-5
Print ISBN
978-1-137-49746-8
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137497475