A Long Anthropological Perspective on the Humanities

Abstract

How interdependent are the sciences and humanities? In this article I trace, in broad terms, a scientifically-grounded narrative that culminates in a world we describe using the humanities, and my field, literary studies, in particular. The longstanding presumption that science sits opposed to the humanities is fostered on both sides, to neither’s benefit. I hope that by describing something of the bilateral relationship between these fields, arguing that they may be points on a web rather than discrete disciplines, we might better appreciate their places in a cultural ecosystem of interdependence. My hope is that scholars in both the sciences and the humanities appreciate better what one offers the other.