I have been following a conversation on Twitter following a New York Times opinion piece about humanism: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/08/opinion/oh-the-humanities.html
I agree with Douthat that anti-scientific sentiment in the humanities has more in common than it wants to admit with Christian humanism (and w Leavis, for that matter). I just don’t think that’s the path forward. I think it’s time to admit that science is part of culture.
— Ted Underwood (@Ted_Underwood) August 8, 2018
I might agree with Ted Underwood about the general point but is the anti-science part really anti-digital? Or rather than that a fear of the digital? If I remember correctly (and possibly I do not), Russian Formalism took a scientific approach to the structures in literature and Oulipo revelled in it.
This might say more about Western European and US humanism but I do wonder if this is a fear of the digital? Our society is becoming increasingly digital (which relies on an engineering / science base, yes) but culture is being placed into this framework or being born digital. Gradually humanism’s subjects are changing and becoming something else.
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