unit 1 Science vs the HUmanitiesdoc资料.docx

1、unit 1 Science vs the HUmanitiesdoc资料unit 1 Science vs. the HUmanitiesUnit OneScience vs. the HumanitiesJacques BarzunText1. Are the humanities a useless frill a vestigial appendage of our antiquated educational system? Has the importance of technology been stressed over that of the humanities at a

2、time when perhaps the converse should be true? Should we bother at all to teach the humanities in our schools? These are questions which have often beset educators and serious-minded thinkers. Let us investigate these questions in their broad context, for our heritage depends to an extent on the ans

3、wers.2. T1 The humanities are not a mere device; they are not agencies for general improvement. The humanities in the broad cultural sense, and in the narrow academic one, have uses that are much more intimate and permanent. In any generation, persons are born who find books, music, works of art, an

4、d theaters in the world and are instinctively drawn to them. These people grow up with an ingrained desire for the objects of their interest and a preference for people of a like taste. A larger group, though less intent, takes similar pleasure in artistic activities from time to time. The two group

5、s together are strong enough to impose on the remainder the daily presence of what delights them.3. T2 Thus the art of architecture and its decoration the post-office mural or the restored Williamsburg are forced on millions who, left to themselves, might live in a cave or a tent. Thus newspapers an

6、d magazines reproduce pictures, retell history, comment on art old and new, criticize music and books, write about the lives and opinions of artists in short, cater for the minority who sway us all by their peculiar tastes.4. Thus again, public libraries and museums and concerts in parks and dinner-

7、hour broadcasts “make available to all” (as we say) the products of these special concerns. Consequently, when we repeat the commonplace that the modern world is ruled by science, we must at once add that that same world is given its shape and color by art, its most pleasing sounds and meanings by m

8、usic and poetry, its categories, characters, and catchwords by philosophy, fiction, and history. S1 Imagine all the devotees of the humanities suddenly withdrawing to a monastery, taking with them all that belongs to them; the workaday world we know would turn before our astonished faces into someth

9、ing bleak, dark, soundless, bare of sensuous charm, and empty of any meaning beyond that of immediate needs and their fulfillment by mechanical aids.5. A few persons many fewer than the humanities can count as devotees might still enjoy intellectual contemplation and mathematical thrills, S2 but eve

10、n they might miss from the stripped stage of daily life the furniture we call civilization.6. This contrast is at once instructive and comforting. T3It tells us that the arts produce objects for the senses and not only for the mind, which is one reason why the humanities are not interested in proofs

11、 or in statistics; in place of proof they give possession, and in place of averages they give uniqueness. And, despite fashions in taste, these objects form an ever-enlarging treasury. We speak of 3,000 years of literature, philosophy, and architecture; of a vast collection of objects of art, of an

12、impressive repertory of music all of it as varied, new and mysterious as it ever was. This reality points to the true role, the indispensable function, of the academic humanities they are the organizers of our huge inheritance of civilization. T4Without the continual work of humanistic scholars, we

13、should be living not in a culture full of distinct and vigorous traditions national, religious, artistic, philosophical, scientific, and political; rather, we should be rummaging about in an attic full of incomprehensible relics.7. When, therefore, the representative of a foundation expresses offici

14、al skepticism about the humanities in the modern world (not ever speaking for himself, since he is a humanist at heart, but for his Board of Trustees, whose hardheadedness is reported as granitic), the argument against his skepticism is quite simple: The humanities are of no use in the social worker

15、s sense of “useful.” They are of use, unobtrusively, all day and every day, to those who respect and enjoy and require the evidences of civilization.8. T5The use of the humanities, then, is proved and fixed by the ancient, unshakable, ever-spreading desire for them. On the surface, these uses appear

16、 more individual than social, more self-indulgent than altruistic. Some men are so selfish that they read a book or go to a concert for their own sinister pleasure, instead of doing it to improve social conditions, as the good citizen does when drinking cocktails or playing bridge.9. T6But one must

17、take things as they are; the advocate of practicality is very unpractical if he does not. We may acknowledge the desirability of devoting human energies to killing viruses and improving our neighbors; but it does not follow that all rewards and research funds should go to projects for the immediate

18、relief of pain and sorrow the “studies” that promise to reduce nail-biting among wallflowers and prevent dorsal decubitus in backsliders.10. For, if we drop the jargon of projects for a moment and look about us, we find that people have a perverse liking for simple satisfactions of their own choosin

19、g. They like singing and dancing and storytelling; they like to argue about the existence of God and the reality of their senses; they want to sit in a corner with a book or outdoors with an easel and a box of paints; they collect coins and arrowheads; they trace their genealogy and develop an inter

20、est in the history of the iron pipe industry. They read about foreign affairs and learn foreign languages for the sake of aimless travel abroad; S4T7there is no end to the silly, scholarly interest that actual, living, modern, scientific, respectable American citizens will take up rather than do an

21、honest days work clearing slums and keeping down divorce.11. The real state of affairs should now be plain. The humanities, which pander to these follies and which are perfectly useless as an antibiotic, are all about us, tempting our eye, ear, and mind, and always adding, adding to the load of misc

22、hief they stand for. Their practitioners seem to have no thought but to increase the sum of the things they deal in. T8True, these things do not cost any more than the undertakings of social science rather less and far less than the mighty enterprises of physical science. To that extent the humaniti

23、es are unwise and, perhaps, undeserving of the attention of those entrusted with millions for educational purposes. Yet those same guardians, it is well known, give of their own money to the liberal arts college of their youth and send their children there to study chiefly the humanities. The practi

24、cal man, it seems, has been too busy spinning dreams of medical and behavioral betterment to bring his opinions in line with his practice.12. T9The academic humanities undoubtedly deal with the arts; why, then, doesnt it follow that scholars and teachers in those fields are artists, or at least cult

25、ivated men? The fact is that they are not, or need not be. T10This must be bluntly said, if only to prevent the serious claims of the humanities from being understood as the claims of humanists to wisdom, elegance, and glamour. Not long ago, a well-known psychiatrist denounced the humanities as a wa

26、steful expense. Put the time and money into mass psychoanalysis, he said, and the sum of individual happiness in this country would be immeasurably increased. This sort of argument is unanswerable. It is also irrelevant. But it shows the danger of perpetuating conventional nonsense about the academi

27、c humanists and their work. S5They can be adequately rewarded and respected only when they appear in their colors.13. The humanities, then, are not a Cinderella who goes forth into the world only with the aid of magic and has to scurry home when real life resumes its sway. Quite the contrary, the hu

28、manities are permanently abroad, and if in their academic setting they are poor, it is because their actual services are taken too much for granted; it is that, by dint of living on their intellectual capital, they look rich rich in students, rich in enthusiasm, rich in intangible rewards. They are

29、poor in means, because they have not known how to make out their case on their own grounds. T11They have claimed powers that belong either to no man or to other men, and at the same time they have been culpably modest and retiring.14. They have heard sanctimonious voices repeating ad nauseam that “m

30、an does not live by bread alone,” and they have never interrupted to say, “Bakers and butchers, be quiet and discharge your debt to us for the alchemy which makes your life behind the counter bearable. “15. The rejoinder, to be sure, is neither gracious nor ennobling, but it is at least honest and,

31、when competition is the order of the day, it is appropriate. In more contemplative moments, the humanities can find other words to represent them, and it is with approximation of such words that this article comes to an end.16. The humanities are a form of knowledge. Like other knowledge, this deals

32、 with mans life in nature and society, but it is acquired through the study of mans spiritual creations language, art, history, philosophy, and religion. T12S6This filtering of the subject, man, through the medium of mind has the effect of keeping always in the foreground the element of novelty, of uniqueness, of astonishing unpredictability. T13Whereas the study of nature assumes and finds its uniformities, and whereas the scientific study of society tries also to grasp what is regular and inevitable, the study of nature and man through the humanities dwells on what is indivi