Arts and Sciences

The liberal arts are not social sciences. While the social sciences attempt to know about social life, the humanities are trying to understand the human condition. The difference may appear subtle but it is quite obvious when we look at the consequences for research practices. In social science, research is shaped by theories and methods, i.e., by perspectives that guide the attention of researchers toward particular objects and approaches that structure their activities in particular ways. The social sciences gain access to their objects by generating data, which they then subject to analysis. In the humanities, by contrast, research (or what is much more accurately called "scholarship") is guided by a comprehensive style, i.e., a way of reading and writing, as well as thinking and feeling, about what it means to be human. They do not really have an object. Where a science tries to overcome our ignorance, an art seeks to improve our ability to imagine. The only relelevant "data set" here is the imagery that is made available by our literature. And the only relevant form of analysis is to think on it seriously in the light of experience.