HUMANITIES AND ANTHROPOLOGY
In yesterday’s post I wrote about the skills necessary for really fine writing as opposed to the content, which can be rough and passionate, erudite and boring, wacky and popular. Where do humanities come into it? And if “human” is a significant definer, why isn’t anthropology — “anthro” also means “human” — the same study.
First, some formal definitions from authorities:
Humanities, those branches of knowledge that concern themselves with human beings and their culture or with analytic and critical methods of inquiry derived from an appreciation of human values and of the unique ability of the human spirit to express itself.
https://www.britannica.com/topic/humanities
Anthropology: 1 : the science of human beings especially : the study of human beings and their ancestors through time and space and in relation to physical character, environmental and social relations, and culture. 2 : theology dealing with the origin, nature, and destiny of human beings. (Merriam-Webster) We can discard theology for now.
Now generalizations. We must consider the points of origin and the state of academia at the time these “things” arose. We might note that in the current times the humanities are sorely neglected, associated with pretensions and elitism. At best they are philosophy or related to the professions. Theos has dissolved as projections.
Humanities include the embodied side of thought about humans, like passions and poetry, even those resisted — like violence and perversion. It includes everything back across time to the point where the pre-frontal cortex of hominins became capable of metaphorical thought, which is the key to art, religion, ethics, and the development of culture. Any language is included as well as any method that can be devised, both subjective and objective.
Anthropology is the application of the Scientific Method to human beings. It is a subset of humanities that deliberately considers humans as objectively as possible. This claim to be scientific — which is contested by some as being impossible — excludes emotion and attachment, even arousal. But the great enterprise of science produces so much power that it is hard for humans to resist arousal to the point of dominating other humans, treating them as less than human. It is at this point — scientific regard of humans without the very humanity of ethics that makes them human.
It was thought at first that the rationality of the Scientific Method was based on efficiency and proof, but time has taught us that without the empathy supported by emotion we were excluding and even stigmatizing a key source of insight and growth. Also, we have found that more than a temporary division of some group who needs to do concentrated thought and experiment, it is morally destructive to allow some people to be privileged, to have more wealth and make more sweeping decisions.
The nineteenth century was a time of taxonomy, classification, disciplines and sorting. We named everything and framed up relationships in what we thought were permanent facts. As time went on, we have discovered that nothing stands still — the world evolves and everything that does not change with it is eliminated. The simple growth of numbers means that at some point everything being counted morphs into something quite different and possibly unexpected. The algorithms we devise start creating algorithms of their own that we don’t understand.
The swelling numbers of human demographics, which are uneven and dissimilar, has become a deadly struggle for space, resources, and control. Those countries we are most tempted to call evil are the nations that are most deprived. International corporations without consciences become imitation people and dominate the real humans, dispensing with anyone in the way of what they think is progress.
Humanities can perceive and name this sort of thing, but it doesn’t happen quickly. Anthropology shatters into sub-categories and those who study other cultures than their own begin to realize that they are imposing what they already know over the top of what is “really” “objectively” believed by that other group. Every day where I am, 19th century European culture is imposed over what’s left of a complete and self-sufficient indigenous culture. At the same time on our horizon a new culture based on capitalism and ownership has been forming, developing new ways to suppress differences and force consuming.
The anthropology of the internet is also changing the planet and may either support this new suppression of emotion or kindle new fires in the humanities. Maybe all the universities will turn their backs on poetry and music in order to serve the School of Business, but in the end this will only hollow out the academic world. It has already begun.
Humanities, broad and inclusive as they is, and much as they can be regarded as interference in the semi-sciences with emotional dramas and anguish, is exceeded always by the world of living things and the substrate of the physical planet. Thus our current pandemic as the DNA of viruses in bats “learn” how to move in aerosols so they can live in us even if it kills us. By understanding and countering this, science turns out to effectively save us.
But the humanities must prove that this can happen and give us the courage to try, even those who have become phobic about science. Thus the part and the whole interact and interfere with each other. The stories of these dramas inform us what to do next.
Science has tried to create separations in the hope of better understanding and a more penetrating technology. But the humanities teach science that humans must recognize that they are produced by the crust of the planet, coming from the humus through the development of the double helix of living cells that complexified into creatures through the action of four molecules arranged in unique patterns. But we are still intertwined, both in skins of cells or floating molecules between cells, and therefore at the nonexistent mercy of the viruses, who don’t even have their own cells in which to live — so seize the cells of living beings.
Biology, which is a science, is supported and guided by logic. Rational human thought is shaped by the humanities which are self-centered and can resent the welfare of viruses and the forms of life that fly in and out of caves at night. But biology tells us that without bats life as we know it would change, that even viruses must be managed rather than eliminated. This reality demands humanitarian reaction and allocation of resources. Anthropology may study how we have managed this over the millennia, but the humanities can teach us why.
