Another month, another of our great universities making brutal cuts. At Exeter (motto: lucem sequimur, ‘we follow the light’) over 500 members of staff have been notified their jobs are at risk in a process to eliminate around 150 people. Most shockingly, 85 per cent of those who received the grim warning are in the faculty of humanities, arts and social sciences.
Well, who needs these interpretive disciplines, the tech bros ask? We are off to Mars in rockets and Stem will lead the way. Except, without the humanities, once the human race arrives on the red planet its residents will find we rank among the least interesting or self-aware specimens in the galaxy.
We live in an age in which technology – for all its wonders – is on the cusp of blunting our ability to distil the precious from the dross. And we are choosing this moment to dismantle our understanding of how to think for ourselves
Society constantly reinforces the mantra that science drives progress and progress is destiny. But it forgets that the past is the instruction manual for the future. History, politics, law, religion, ethics and the full cursus of the humanities are the rear-view mirror, and a critical crucible for winnowing evidence from assertion. We live in an age in which technology – for all its wonders – is on the cusp of blunting our ability to distil the precious from the dross. And we are choosing this moment to dismantle our understanding of how to think for ourselves. With no redoubts built from the humanities we open the door wide to the illusory in the everyday.
