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marquisedemerteuil's picture

papa t'es plus dans le coup

ok, this post needed a title and i got sick of relevant titles. that is a french 60s pop song i'm obsessed with. the title means, "you're not with it anymore, dad." now for some actual content:

i'm also in professor grobstein's group and i found this way of distinguishing between the sciences and the humanities to be reductive to the point of inaccuracy. it certainly does not do justice to the humanities.

the humanities examine the external world, too, not just "feelings." the expression "people's feelings about" makes the humanities sound fluffier than the sciences which is already a common enough misconception.

what about philosophy? philosophy is often not about feelings at all, but about how the external world can be made sense of...like science. in fact, these disciplines used to be less separated, and for good reason. art history can be about perceptual experiments and philosophies, not about how the artists "feel" about the visual. it can be either.

i think it is unnecessary to summarize the differences between these two disciplines because that leads to reductive thinking.

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