Humanities?

Spectator#1 · 01-04-2007 6:03pm #1

Hi there,

I was just browsing through forums there and when I saw one called 'Humanities' I came in expecting it to be concerning the humanities, but it's not at all, it's just a discussion forum about stuff in general.

I'm not being pedantic or giving out, I was Just wondering why it's called the 'humanities' forum, that's all. Anybody care to offer any ideas on that?

mike65 · 01-04-2007 6:05pm

Humanities is the place that won't fit anywhere else! Or being generous - its broad dissipline.

Mike.

Boston · 01-04-2007 6:07pm

anything to do with the human condition can go here.

Spectator#1 · 01-04-2007 6:25pm

mike65 wrote:

Humanities is the place that won't fit anywhere else! Or being generous - its broad dissipline.

Thanks for the reply! Yeah, I figured that, it's not a big deal really, nothing wrong with a broad discipline forum, it just really doesn't fit the name Humanities is all!

anything to do with the human condition can go here.

Thus spake Boston, and henceforth, anything to do with the human condition did go there.

BUT, the dole, naturism on Irish beaches, mobile phones, iraq war veterans, 24hr bars and tax refunds all have very little to do with the human condition, as such, if you don't mind me saying so.

Hence, my original post.

Boston · 01-04-2007 7:02pm

In your opinion

simu · 01-04-2007 10:50pm

It's a legacy issue.

Spectator#1 · 01-04-2007 11:34pm

Boston wrote:

In your opinion

No.

Here is a page of definitions of 'Humanities'. Feel free to seek any others you might want to add to it, but the fact remains that mobile phones and the dole have very, very little to do with the humanities.

So, no, it has very little to do with the humanities, fact. You might want to make that tired old argument that that's just my opinion, but what you'd be doing there is denying the fact that the words we use hold a common reference for every person. A lot of topics on this forum have absolutely nothing to do with the humanities, that's not an opinion, that's a fact.

InFront · 02-04-2007 1:38am

I think the biki article clears it up http://wiki.boards.ie/wiki/Humanities

Humanities originally was set up for the discussion of arty stuff like theatre and ballet. Overtime it developed into a forum where intellectual debate and discussion about pretty much anything

Anyway, you can broadly include politics, sociology and international relations into "Humanties" in the academic sense, so I don't really understand why you seem to think those topics are so out of place. In fact one of the definitions from you link reads "humanistic discipline: studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills); "the college of arts and sciences"

Spectator#1 · 02-04-2007 10:31am

InFront wrote:

I think the biki article clears it up http://wiki.boards.ie/wiki/Humanities

Anyway, you can broadly include politics, sociology and international relations into "Humanties" in the academic sense, so I don't really understand why you seem to think those topics are so out of place. In fact one of the definitions from you link reads "humanistic discipline: studies intended to provide general knowledge and intellectual skills (rather than occupational or professional skills); "the college of arts and sciences"

Cheers for that, I hadn't seen that article. Fair enough, it's just turned into a non-humanities forum, that makes sense.

You haven't convinced me with that 'general knowledge and intellectual skills' argument though. I'd be interested to see what we learn about humanity through an intellectual argument about the dole and what general knowledge or intellectual skills we obtain in a discussion about tax or mobile phones or nudists.

You can't fit a lot of the threads on this forum into any of the definitions of humanity on the page I gave, come on! It doesn't matter, I was just wondering why...

DadaKopf · 02-04-2007 1:50pm

I was always against the splitting up of the Humanities board, as it was into Humanities, Politics, Philosophy/loads of other stuff. The Humanities board has really suffered, as have others, in many ways. Though, at the same time, it's usually here that the only interesting discussions recently have come up.

Bottle_of_Smoke · 02-04-2007 6:38pm

surely this is a feedback issue

Spectator#1 · 03-04-2007 6:50pm

Perhaps. I was just wondering would any of the people that post on the forum have any ideas about it. Thought we might get a bit of a debate going about it too, stick in the mud.