Description
Think about how Pennington and Leezenberg presented the humanities in the texts.
For your initial post
What are the humanities based on the two texts? Use examples when possible.
Has your definition of the humanities differed from your Introduction Post pt.1? What has changed?
Do you feel as if the humanities are a part of your everyday life? Explain.
For your replies
Please respond to at least two of your classmates, but feel free to comment on more!
You may respond by noting your own knowledge.
Comment if you are interested in learning more.
Respond with any positive comments or constructive questions.
This is my definition for humanities in post P1
“I see humanities related to history and how human cultures develops through time.”
Student response 1 (Corban)
Based on the texts, humanities are a conceptual outlook on what science oftentimes has difficulty understanding. Science often measures truth whereas humanities measure meaning and interpretation (Leezenberg, 24). When science attempts to study the mind it pushes into the field of psychology, however, humanities studies culture. Culture is an all-encompassing way to understand a society, and differences in culture open up new ways to understand humanities. My definition of humanities was definitely incomplete. It was interesting to read about what makes humanities differ from more traditional sciences. The goal of humanities was also something I was not aware of. Humanities are part of everyday life. Every time we interact with and interpret art, we use the concept of humanities to understand what the creator was expressing.
Student response 2 (Sami):
In the second paragraph from the Pennington , it says that “The humanities find its life as an organism. To understand any culture, one must abandon structure for intuitive understanding that structure can only estimate and approximate. Structure offers a sense of security in its reliability. But the living collective organism of human individuals is dynamic.” While in the Leezenberg text it says ” The*humanities include disciplines as diverse as literary theory, history, art history, musicology, linguistics, film studies, religious studies, and philosophy.”
My definition was a little different , but I understood the fundamental of it. Humanities is really just why and how certain things were made the certain way they were by the certain people who made these things or technically anything.
I feel as humanities is a part of my life, every person has their humanities side because we all have our own “story” in a way.
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Chapter 1
Copyright 2016. Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
All rights reserved. May not be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except fair uses permitted under U.S. or applicable copyright law.
INTRODUCTION
Many people talk about culture as though everybody knew what it is. When asked in
academic settings if they know what culture is, most give an unhesitating affirmative
response. To the follow-up question of what culture is, responses are quite hesitant. Most
cannot respond. The few who can respond give partial answers that are often only examples
of culture. Thorough discussion brings forth increasing insight, but not adequate definition.
For each individual, a partial response is adequate in a way because no single individual
defines culture. Group consensus defines culture. But then the question arises of consensus
concerning what. In these group inquiries, individuals co-operated with and challenged each
other to develop a consensus concerning consensus. Even though individuals in these groups
initially could not give formal definition to culture, they did not speak falsely when they
claimed to know what culture is. Subsequent discussion revealed that they could give form to
their knowledge, but that they had not previously done so.
This work is an approach to knowledge of culture similar in character to responses in the
group discussion. The point of view is from the humanities rather than the social sciences.
Although the sciences provide invaluable observations for confirming what we have come to
understand as culture, they can only give it structure as a mechanism. The humanities find its
life as an organism. To understand any culture, one must abandon structure for intuitive
understanding that structure can only estimate and approximate. Structure offers a sense of
security in its reliability. But the living collective organism of human individuals is dynamic.
It does not confine itself to any immutable form. Structure can be specified relatively easily
for the purpose of sharing and learning. The underlying validity, however, comes from human
intuition that defies specification.
We know about culture mainly through its symbolic forms. However, to discuss forms,
we must dissociate them from their cultural purpose, which is a social unity composed of
multiple individuals. The fundamental principle of any culture is e pluribus unum. The
examination of symbols requires attention to forms regardless of their purpose. We can
recognize patterns through repetitious occurrences that permit prediction. Studying the
structure of language is unrelated to the purpose of language. We must only be able to keep
track of language components that we observe. Analysis of all the written language in a large
library would yield an extensive and detailed knowledge of language structure, but defy
understanding. Language is a symbol of culture. We can speculate that a culture is complex
because of its structure without understanding the purpose of that complex system. We
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Robert Pennington
actually acquire such knowledge of structure through the mathematics of information theory.
But that knowledge cannot produce the intelligible language composition that an individual
can who is completely ignorant of formal language structure.
Language is a convenient starting point to discuss structure because so many cultures
have developed methods of recording language. As complex as language may be, it is only
one system within a larger and far more complex system. All human behavior occurs within
an actual or implied social context and constitutes the symbolic system. Even withdrawal
from a social context is a component of the system because it represents the binary opposite
of social association. Individuals cannot be extricated from the social context. Within a
culture, individuals understand the various forms even though they may not be able to specify
the forms. We can understand vocal tone, facial expression, body movement or posture,
proximity or touch. But we have few methods of recording such behaviors that would permit
us to study their formal structures. And if we could, the structures themselves would defy
purposeful construction for cultural understanding. At best, the knowledge of structure would
permit defining a culture as individuals who utilize that structure.
Formal learning requires knowledge of structure because it is the sharing of forms. When
we seek form, we find it and ascribe to it a natural origin. We do not think of structure as
formed by our own inquiry but rather as formed by natural influences before the instigation of
our inquiry. Learning is a process of recognizing repetition and replications of context.
Without structure and form, we have nothing to learn, not even the realization that no context
recurs twice. But the concept of recurrence supposes the possibility, so we seek its
manifestation. Applying the concept to various contexts supposes criteria for recognition. The
criteria are the forms and structure that we subsequently verify and confirm. According to the
criteria, certain specific contexts are recurrences that we distinguish from other occurrences
that do not recur or from other recurrences. Form and structure, however, are not external to
observation but rather emergent from observation. We see then as we do because of some
value that we share. Value is not resident in the external world to which we give form and
structure. Value is resident in humans who observe form and structure derived from human
value. We can learn directly from others to replicate form and structure accurately, but we
cannot learn directly to replicate value.
Culture is a translation of what is intuitively understood into replicable forms and
structure. We translate what is unavailable to the senses into symbols that are available to the
senses. No amount of study, no matter how diligent, can find the conceptual in the
representational. Words on a page have no representational function until an observer senses
them. Even then, the observer must have some knowledge of form as concept representation.
Form facilitates conceptual sharing. But the observer must have the capacity for
conceptualization similar to that of the writer. Social interaction is a continuous process of
translation and back translation. An individual translates the conceptual into the form and
structure of the cultural symbolic system. Another individual translates that form and
structure back into the conceptual. The form and structure are not the conceptual but merely
the representational medium to facilitate sharing the conceptual. Form and structure have
temporal and spatial bounds. Concepts have no such physical properties. Culture, then,
translates the conceptual into the confines of time and space.
Through the methods of social science, we can account for and organize what we sense.
Many valuable works provide detailed descriptions of overt behaviors repeated in patterns of
initial acts and subsequent responses. Observers have noted that a wide range of behaviors is
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Introduction
3
not innate. Human children do not exhibit the behavior of adults. Biological maturity could
explain the acquisition of different innate behaviors. But observers have noted that adults do
not all acquire the same behaviors. The scientific interpretation is that different groups of
people cultivate different behaviors. Ultimately, science can only reveal that overt differences
occur and what those differences are. Prior observation permits speculation, expectation and
prediction concerning later occurrences with varying degrees of accuracy. But, implication is
beyond the scope of science. The purpose of scientific observation is beyond the scope of
science. It must have value, importance and worth that instigate observation and determine its
methods. No matter how detailed and accurate our scientific observations of culture, they tell
us nothing more than appearance. They cannot tell us what has appeared.
Conceptual value lies within the scope of the humanities. And this value guides the
formation of culture, including scientific observation. The concept concerns what being
human is, if anything, other than mere biological occurrence. The answer to the whether
being human is more than biological is contained in the question. Biology is not conceptual.
Questions are conceptual. Biological beings are also conceptual beings. Scientific observation
leads to interpretation, which is conceptual and, therefore, within the scope of the humanities.
The observation of cultures presents a question of whether cultures are merely different
appearances of what is conceptually identical. But science cannot answer that question
because it can only examine appearances. At some point, we want to interpret scientific
observation to know conceptually what appears to the senses. We want to know whether
humans are conceptually as well as biologically different, and whether cultures are
conceptually as well as behaviorally different. We can only address these questions through
the humanities.
Some argue that the conceptual is only internal, electro-chemical, biological stimulation.
People have ideas, and even ideas about ideas, the purpose of which is to establish relative
likelihood of survival and propagation of advantageous genetic components. Biological
examples adept at the conceptual may have an advantage in effective response to unforeseen
contexts actually sensed. Those individuals excessively dominated by the conceptual may
progressively face disadvantage through inability to apply the conceptual to the actual. But
biology cannot conclusively determine whether electro-chemical reactions cause conceptual
awareness or vice versa. Neither can biology address whether conceptual awareness has any
relationship to survival advantage at all. Science assumes a competition among individuals
and presents observed evidence that seems to confirm the assumption. However, science
cannot address and does not consider whether the conceptual may impel the biological toward
a perpetually redefined fulfillment. The conceptual may be the carrot that we continuously
dangle in front of ourselves as an impetus for further biological development.
Further, science cannot address whether the conceptual has any resemblance to the actual.
If we assume that ideas are electro-chemical or photo-electro-chemical responses to stimuli,
those ideas may have similarity with whatever occurred to produce the stimuli. According to
science, the production of stimuli is quite complex. And all science can actually do is
examine the production of stimuli. Any assertion concerning the production is an idea. It is
conceptual. Scientific inquiry examines to what extent the conceptual explains the production
of stimuli. The approach assumes that an actual, external environment conforms to an internal
concept, but that the concept derives from the actual. When two observers behave similarly in
a context, science assumes an independent, external stimulus-producing object. But all that
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Robert Pennington
science can accurately claim is that two observers are similar enough that they appear to share
photo-electro-chemical responses.
The humanities consider who we are, not just our appearances. We examine ourselves as
more than physical, biological occurrences. We generate concepts regardless of whether we
can base them on stimuli to our senses. We create worlds of possibility and even
impossibility, worlds that nobody has ever sensed through naturally occurring stimuli to the
senses. A concept is the effect on us of what we could sense. It is possibility. We choose what
to sense from conceptual value because possibility is infinite. We create conceptual worlds
and construct them through the senses. A world is a single concept in that it is a single,
comprehensive effect on us. But we create isolate component concepts to expand our selfconcepts, which are the sum and the interrelationship of all effects on us. What science
defines as a single, unchanging object can be conceptually different with every observation.
Therefore, self-concept can change often, even continuously. Other individuals are concepts
in their effects on us. And we attempt to present ourselves conceptually by affecting others in
specific intended ways that can differ for each other individual we effect.
Because each individual has the potential to generate a conceptual world, we have the
potential for as many worlds as we have individuals. But the humanities seek universals in
conceptual existence. One of those we find is the value of social bonds, which require a
modicum of conceptual compatibility. Through the discourse of social interaction, we
propose worlds for others‟ consideration. Their responses indicate approval and acceptance,
modification, rejection or counter-proposal. At this most basic level, we develop signs of
affirmation and negation. We sense that we share our worlds with others, and the nature of
that sharing inspires our concepts. Though we may assume a single world, each human
concept is a sum of different effects. The world concept for each is different. The humanities
consider individuality in the search for universals because the world is not a completed work.
A unique conceptual component may awaken value that invites approval and acceptance
among other individuals, permitting them to expand in conceptual evolution. Conceptual
genesis brings all affecting individuals into common relationship regardless of biology.
We read nature‟s narrative in the conceptual world. Nature presents to us its story by
utilizing elemental devices familiar in human narratives. Humans are but one element, with
each as a concept interrelated with all others. Other elemental concepts depend on the reader
for interpretation. The characters in the narrative may be whatever the reader chooses to draw
from nature. The character roles are whatever the reader ascribes to them. All elements that
the reader chooses to sense may be active characters, inactive setting or instruments in the
service of other characters. Other elements may elude the reader‟s senses, but the reader
knows of them because of the influence they exert on other narrative elements. The entire
conceptual narrative may feature protagonists, antagonists, allies, adversaries and indifferent,
disinterested spectators. The reader‟s narrative concept may be comic or tragic. It may have a
plot with some unknown and undisclosed but definite end. It may be complete, continuous
improvisation without intent or purpose. The reader may assume a narrator with complete or
limited omniscience but without any influence on the unfolding action. The narrative could
also be the work of an author, sensed or not sensed, who may or may not modify the narrative
through active involvement, and who may or may not interact with the reader and other
characters. And an individual may read the narrative as actual, not conceptual, or
metaphorical of the ultimately conceptual.
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Introduction
5
The characters in this narrative can be self-defining if the reader chooses to give them
that capacity. A set element in the narrative of one reader can be, in the narrative of another
reader, a character that chooses a static appearance of indefinite duration. Human elements
may be roles defined by the unfolding narrative, without independent capacities for selfdefinition. Or, a reader as narrative co-author could define roles to fit episodes within the
overall plot. Any reader must also assume a role in relation to the narrative as a whole as a
character or only a reader, as one who effects the narrative or as one whom the narrative
effects. This narrative does progress independently of the reader no matter how much
influence or control the reader may choose to exert because the reader can be, at best, only a
co-author. In nature‟s narrative, the reader shares readership with other characters that define
elements differently, especially the character elements. As readers, characters can define
themselves independently of other readers. Within the narrative, readers interact as characters.
Even if readers share a view that they must discover the nature of their characters from
contextual elements, what each discovers may not conform to what another discovers. If one
reader chooses not to give characters self-defining capacity, and those same characters as
readers choose to define themselves, the first reader is confronted with either incorrect
behavior in a valid narrative or an invalid narrative.
People assume that nature‟s narrative has a single, correct reading. We have learned the
fundamentals of literacy from the stories related to us as we developed awareness of senses
and sensations. These are not just the stories told for entertainment but the stories in answer to
all of our questions and curiosity. Every encouragement or discouragement from surrounding
characters provides an exercise in reading the contextual narrative. From influences on us, our
responses to them, and subsequent reaction to our responses, we form our conception of
overall narrative and what episodes are likely to occur as components. The fundamental
narrative through which we develop environmental literacy becomes an indelible component
of ourselves as characters and readers. Though we may accept narratives as others may
propose them, we read them through a lens of comparison. We add to and increase the scope
of our original narrative and conceptual world, but we cannot entirely abandon them.
Shared narratives between and within generations form a culture. Within its scope,
participants interact according to their roles in the narrative. Some cultures allow participants
flexibility in their performances. But narratives include methods for restrictive discipline to
assure that performances conform to and integrate with the general form and purpose. Early
enculturation consists of rehearsals with performance reviews from other participants
accepted as competent in knowledge of the narrative and proper performance. These
reviewers are also the senior readers who arbitrate the divergent readings of lower-level
participants. Performers who demonstrate competence and proficiency in narrative
performance earn higher degrees of legitimate independence and even authorship. The
narrative may allow lower-level performers much flexibility as they try out for suitable roles,
or their roles may be well defined very early. Even when they have flexibility, senior
participants continually review and restrict to guide them into properly defined roles within
the narrative. The process of instruction in narrative reading and performance assures
continuity and agreement for co-operation and interaction conducive to social cohesion and
cultural propagation.
Although we tend to think of science as an explicit and seemingly objective approach to
observation, examination of scientific development exposes science as merely another
narrative form. We find that initiation into the field of scientific inquiry requires that
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Robert Pennington
participants accept and acknowledge a fundamental role that is fixed and inflexible.
Interaction with environmental context is clearly defined. Scientific performance is subject to
review from others deemed competent, knowledgeable and proficient in proper performance.
By demonstrating competence and proficiency, performers earn higher degrees of legitimate
independence and authorship. Lower-level participants may have much flexibility in roles and
may even be required to develop such flexibility. But senior participants review and restrict
them, guiding development into increasingly specialized roles. The purpose of such review
and guidance is to assure continuity and agreement for co-operation and interaction for
scientific cohesion and propagation. And in its pure form, scientific inquiry merely attempts
to predict in advance the end of the narrative.
Because narrative is the realm of the humanities, science falls within and in fact serves
the humanities. Currently accepted scientific method begins with theory, which is conceptual.
The method translates the conceptual into empirical terms. But the terms themselves represent
abstractions rather than specific occurrences. Procedures for observation then yield or fail to
yield specific occurrences that are not abstract or conceptual. The final step returns to the
conceptual through interpretation and general abstraction. The purpose of inquiry is to
develop methods that can verify or refute, validate or dismiss cultural narrative without
distortion. Scientific method subjects the conceptual narrative of the humanities to rigorous
perceptual scrutiny to rid the narrative of false conceptions. In its rigorous insistence on
specific perceptual methods, however, science introduces the possibility of a different kind of
distortion. Observational discipline intended to avoid invalid conceptions can easily exclude
perceptions that would verify valid conceptions. In other words, the scientific narrative may
fail in its role within the larger narrative of the humanities. Justifying the divergence requires
readers who can recognize the disparity between the two narratives, and who are highly
proficient in both humanities and science narrative to arbitrate difference.
One difference concerns the question of whether science can stand alone as narrative. If
science ultimately serves to validate humanities narrative through structural support, then
understanding humanities narrative requires that the science narrative ultimately be
abandoned. Many researchers recognize that an effective scientist must also be an artist. We
can extend that to say that science is art. What many consider as science is merely the study
and development of artistic technique. No matter how competent and proficient someone may
be in whatever technique, that alone does not create art. Without unique, original expression
of the conceptual, one who is exceedingly skilled through practice of painting is still only a
painter. Without unique concepts or operational techniques, those who are highly proficient
and competent in scientific method are only research workers. Continual repetition and
application of standard measures to previously defined concepts contribute nothing to the
humanities narrative. They may refine narrative form, but their narrative value concerns
technique.
The artistic dimension of science is no different from the artistic dimension of painting,
sculpture, music, writing or any other technique artists may use. Any of those techniques,
including science, introduces the conceptual to the realm of the senses. The artist chooses
techniques judged best for how the artist decides that the conceptual should be sensed. The
response that the artist intends is an evocation of the conceptual. Whether the technique is
sculpture or a specific research process, the purpose is to evoke in the reader or viewer the
conceptual perception that inspired the technique in the sculptor or scientist. We discuss
schools of painting such as impressionism or realism that differ from other schools in their
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Introduction
7
techniques. We tend to think of science as rigid in its methodological rigor devoted to the
most demanding adherence to realism. But that is only one school of science. The ascendance
of that school is traced to its effectiveness in contributing to the dominant conceptual
narrative of the humanities. This school of science is also a school of art. Once it has brought
forth the conceptual for sensation, the technique must be ignored and abandoned for
perception of the conceptual.
Just as the scientist must also be an artist, the artist must also be a scientist, but may not
conform to the current school of science. An artist considers the conceptual and proposes a
technique for making it available to the senses. The techniques include any forms available to
the senses, even crossing technical boundaries to utilize forms accepted for one conceptual
area to evoke another conceptual area. Artists are not restricted to the boundaries of specific
scientific schools that limit conceptual speculation to what may be plausibly inferred from
prior forms. The work of art proposes a theory of appearance for some conceptual interaction.
The form of artwork, then, is what some scientists call artifacts. The forms are not actual
concepts but rather the result of interaction between concepts. The artist constructs from raw
or pure perception, which is not available to the senses. The concepts that the artist evokes
may have no observable forms themselves but do produce observable results of their
occurrence. A technique that evokes the same concept among multiple observers becomes an
accepted form, just as an accepted measure in science. The technique is a valid form of the
concept. When others use the same technique with similar concept evocation, the form is also
reliable. The practice of art continually develops as artists contribute technical innovations
and variations that build upon prior artistic successes.
Some may object that artists cannot be scientists when their conceptual foundation is the
imagination, that true science is founded on what is actually available to the senses in time
and space. The argument confines science to specifically knowable times and spaces, and the
appearances that occur, have occurred or will occur at those times and spaces. However, this
is a particular school of science concerned with the definite. Although art may depict that
school of science of the definite, art may also depict an undeveloped school, that of the
indefinite. This school of science and art accepts the accuracy of human speculation and
imagination. Within the humanities, we find science and art integrated as an indicator of
human development that we cannot observe directly. We do not have to assume that our
familiar senses are the ultimate fruition of human development. In any case, a definition of
science is a deliberate, self-justifying choice, cultivated among adherents, that excludes
possible alternatives based on cultural assumptions, which that science must inevitably
confirm.
The scope of the humanities is the continuing process of being human, a process that we
cannot separate from humans ourselves. We examine our artifacts to discover whether we are
alone in our humanity. Our assumption is that our artifacts signify something.
Comprehending the significance and finding in ourselves what is signified evoke a sense of
conceptual commonality. The humanities are a process of discovery through creativity. We
learn who we are by generating artifacts as much as we learn by examining artifacts. Humans
fabricate the evidence on which we base our conclusions about ourselves. However, this is
not the kind of fabrication that the dominant school of definite science considers evidence of
falsehood. Evidence fabrication in the humanities is imperative to our knowledge and
understanding. The purpose of the humanities is to know what is human by the study of
fabrications. The more fabrications we generate and the more varied the forms, the clearer our
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conceptual understanding of humanity becomes. Of course, we do confirm our fundamental
assumption that humanity is conceptual rather than biological. And our confirmation is based
on fabricated evidence. But the capacity to fabricate evidence is the indicator of conceptual
humanity through which we recognize the process of being human. To be human, we cannot
separate or isolate ourselves from fabrication. The evidence is not false but rather significant
of what is human. Whatever artifact the artist or anyone else generates expands humanity.
The system of fabrications that a group accepts is the observable aspect of culture. Some
may consider fabrications as inherently deceptive because they deviate from the truth. But our
conceptual perceptions cannot be deceptive because the conceptual cannot be false. Anything
we conceive is a true conception. As long as a fabrication remains conceptual, it is true.
Fabrications of form, however, are always false because the conceptual is formless. To give
any form to the conceptual is to deviate from the truth as an absolute. When two or more
individuals agree to a fabricated form as signifying a concept, then the truth is that agreement.
For those individuals, the fabricated form is true for that concept. An assertion that those
individuals had agreed to a different form would be a false and potentially a deceptive
assertion. We fabricate manifestations of the conceptual. Agreement and acceptance among
two or more individuals establishes a common representation of humanity. The representation
cannot be true because the concept of humanity is formless. What can be true is only that
certain individuals agree to and accept the fabrications. So long as they do not deviate from
that truth, no deception occurs. When they accept fabrications as the true forms of the
conceptual, then deception occurs.
The deception would be irrelevant except for interactions between cultures. If everyone
agreed and accepted the same forms as truth, that would be true. We can assign forms to the
formless arbitrarily, and that would be true just because we say so. It assigns a certain
character to the concept of truth such that something is true if it is manifest in a certain form
or system of forms. Although we tend to think of truth as external to humanity, it is actually a
human conception. Whether our ideal is that truth comes to us incidentally, accidentally or
through some specific process, the ideal itself is a human conception to which we solicit or
demand agreement and acceptance. For many cultures, truth originates externally to human
conception. However, that itself is a human conception. If human fabrication of conceptual
forms were deceptive, they would have to deviate from our own ideals of conceptual forms.
Culture, as a widespread acceptance of conceptual ideals and forms, fabricates conceptual
falsehood ideals and forms just as it fabricates truth. Deception is the acceptance of falsehood
as if it were the accepted truth. Between cultures, accepted forms differ. But each culture
accepts its ideals of truth and, therefore, falsehood as external to humanity and universal for
all. The deception breeds a perception that other cultures are false.
Culture develops maintenance systems for aligning learned perceptions and current
perceptions. On the social level, shared forms serve to establish and confirm agreement and
acknowledge acceptance of the conceptual system. Individuals may utilize any forms of
behavior to interact with a context. Over time, interaction yields a concept of a natural state
for the concept. Further interaction compares the conceptual with the actual. Divergence
between conceptual and the actual motivates individuals to modify the actual to bring it into
conformity with the conceptual until the learned, conceptual perception and the current actual
perception are aligned. Divergence occurs between conceptual and actual perceptions of both
non-human and human environments. Using specific, learned forms for interaction with nonhuman environments has two purposes. First, individuals expect to align the divergent
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Introduction
9
perceptions of the non-human environment. Second, individuals signal to others their
perceptions of the non-human environment so that others can confirm and ratify shared
perceptions, aligning perceptions in the human
