‘What Is a Fact?’ a Humanities Class Prepares STEM Students to Be Better Scientists

The humanities, rightly understood, are the things that technology cannot take away or substitute for. Of course, I don’t mean ‘humanities’ in the way that they’ve been hijacked as ideological programs of cultural change by many elite universities. I mean humanities broadly understood as the exploration of what it truly means to be human and the sk... See more
A Bull Market in the Humanities
But to be human is not to have answers. It is to have questions—and to live with them. The machines can’t do that for us. Not now, not ever.
And so, at last, we can return—seriously, earnestly—to the reinvention of the humanities, and of humanistic education itself. We can return to what was always the heart of the matter—the lived experience of exi... See more
And so, at last, we can return—seriously, earnestly—to the reinvention of the humanities, and of humanistic education itself. We can return to what was always the heart of the matter—the lived experience of exi... See more
D. Graham Burnett • Will the Humanities Survive Artificial Intelligence?


Science holds all knowledge as tentative and uncertain.
While people tend to accept this in theory, the metaphor of Facts connotes certainty and permanence, and inspires a fervor often indistinguishable from religious fundamentalism.
The metaphor of Facts thus creates a countercurrent to the spirit of science in public discourse and everyday life.