Society relates all its achievements to what was done and stored in the spheres of men’s activities. Art or technology implies the versatile nature of the themes which human beings can make come true. Humanities are the standpoint of the discussion in this paper. Its relations between other modes of human inquiry and expression pretend to work out the main differences of it when comparing the significance of humanities while giving examples of its expression in arts.
The desire of people to be closer to the standards of humanity as an embodiment of something right, light, and helpful is not surprising, especially in the era of new inventions and decisions about the people’s environmental conditioning, which stays many aspects unanswered. People tend to do it first and then think over what has been done. Humanities, actually, reaches the points of people’s experience, passing over the facts of making some sense and taking good results from it. In fact, as it is considered, humanity is a combination of approaches toward what should be followed by people in real life; it is a sort of societal discipline which can serve as a tool of control in it.
“The humanities do not exist in a vacuum. And meaningful education in the humanities takes for granted that men and women can be moved by ideas and by the expression of ideas.” (Kriegel 712) The notion of humanities, in major cases, takes place when speaking of things that make people’s life constantly move. Among them are science, technology, economics, and arts. Due to the personal ambitions of human beings, especially those being in power, the impact of humanities as an ethical factor loses significance from time to time. “But the humanities are about more than ethics, as indicated by the recent expansions of applied ethics to include other humanistic disciplines.” (Frodeman 29)
The humanities have long distinguished between a capacity for reason and a capacity for creative thought and expression. That human beings experience a tension between the ordered, calculative, disciplined dimensions of knowledge on the one hand and expression and improvisational, spontaneous, intuitive dimensions on the other is a common assumption. (Riley 2008)
The point is that in present times any sort of creative work is considered with some glimpses towards the implementation of scientific-technological progress and the main product in post-industrial society as information, of course. Scientific thought in any way could not emerge without the artistic or creative one. Mankind always strives to express what is paramount and secondary among things due to “discovering new opportunities and openings for creative reflection, improvisation, and action.” (Riley 2008)
Humanities are rather felt in works of art where artists tend to pay spectators attention to the harm which people cause to nature and other people. The flow of artistic thought is implemented in the concept of humane intentions in preventing global disasters. In fact, one of the main functions of art is to behave in people the core attitudes providing the reasonable and rational stream in the decision-making process of every single human being. “Thus, no life is complete without having heard Beethoven’s Seventh; without having read Hemingway and Heller; without having laughed at Aristophanes and Woody Allen; without having learned to become what college brochures call “a more well-rounded person.” (Kriegel 712) According to one of the arts, namely architecture, John Ruskin, in his “Seven Lamps of Architecture,” directly pointed out the main significance of it when adoring and expressing emotions after what has already been seen for the nurturing humanities as it is.
The influence of humanities is felt in the political, economic, and social affairs when, for example, looking at the development of “techno-scientific optimism” (Frodeman 29) beginning in the 1950s. Some changes in geopolitical relationships between main countries invoked multiple huge and long-termed manifestations and protest actions of Americans in the 1960s up to 1980s. Stream of philosophy, music, and culture is known as hippy emerged in the USA. Such warfare actions as in Vietnam were preceded by works of Hemingway in literature. Afterward, the humane motives were reflected in the architecture streams as Bauhaus or Art Deco.
Humanities were on the edge of total catastrophe during the period of the terrifying Cold War in the twentieth century. The invention of a nuclear bomb, for instance, is reflected in the creation of the special board in the UN responsible for the lessening of the nuclear danger for peaceful people from the countries possessing it at their disposal. Robert Frodeman thoroughly investigated the key points for people to be followed so that to adhere to humanities as a concept of high dimension; he concludes the extreme importance of humanities by noting the following statement:
Once we recognize that the humanities and the humanistic-oriented social sciences have an important role to play in our public life and policy development, we are also faced with the question of what would be a proper policy for the humanities to encourage this development. But in developing a policy for humanities, we should strive to avoid the pathologies of a linear model that begins with basic research and ends with societal benefit. (Frodeman 29)
In conclusion, it should be mentioned that humanities are one of the key concepts creating the equilibrium in people’s actions and simultaneously making emphasis on what should be corrected. The notion of humanities is rather weighty as it can impact the status quo in political, economic, and social relationships on the whole. The reliable human beings are the prime movers of humanities promotion within masses in spheres of public relations and education as well.
References
Frodeman, R., Mitcham, C., & Pielke, R. (2003). Humanities for Policy-And a Policy for the Humanities: Scientists Have Been Asked to Demonstrate Their Value to Policymakers; Now Humanists Must Show What They Have to Offer. Issues in Science and Technology, 20, 29+.
Kriegel, L. (1984). Who Cares about the Humanities?. The Nation, 239, 712+.
Riley, D. (2007). Improvisation. University of East Anglia. Web.