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Quotation of the Day for June 28, 2013"But it is precisely because science is so powerful that we need the humanities now more than ever. In your science, mathematics and engineering classes, you're given facts, answers, knowledge, truth. Your professors say, 'This is how things are.' They give you certainty. The humanities, at least the way I teach them, give you uncertainty, doubt and skepticism. "The humanities are subversive. They undermine the claims of all authorities, whether political, religious or scientific. This skepticism is especially important when it comes to claims about humanity, about what we are, where we came from, and even what we can be and should be. Science has replaced religion as our main source of answers to these questions. Science has told us a lot about ourselves, and we're learning more every day. "But the humanities remind us that we have an enormous capacity for deluding ourselves. They also tell us that every single human is unique, different than every other human, and each of us keeps changing in unpredictable ways. The societies we live in also keep changing-in part because of science and technology! So in certain important ways, humans resist the kind of explanations that science gives us." - John Horgan, science writer and teacher, from "Why Study Humanities? What I Tell Engineering Freshmen". [http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/2013/06/20/why-study-humanities-what-i-tell-engineering-freshmen/] Submitted by: Terry Labach Jun. 26, 2013  |
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