The fields of study that you come across on the Kennislink page History, Language &Culture all fall under the humanities. But what exactly are humanities? How did they originate and do they have a specific method that distinguishes them from the other sciences?
The humanities, also called the humanities or "humanities", study the products of the human mind such as art, music, language, literature, theater, and texts in the broadest sense of the word. Broadly speaking, the humanities consist of the following fields:linguistics, literary studies (or literature), history, philosophy, art history, archaeology, musicology, theater studies, religious studies and media studies.
Is there a typical humanities method or working method that connects all these sciences? Since ancient times, philosophers, philologists, linguists, historians, and others have engaged in activities that we now classify as the humanities. They have developed methods that are still used today, albeit in modified form.
Authentic or counterfeit?
For example, historical source criticism has existed since the 5th century BC, when the Greek historian Herodotus established selection criteria for historical sources. For example, a source had to be credible and consistent with other sources. It was not until centuries later that these criteria were reworked into a precise method by scholars such as Jean Mabillon in the seventeenth century and especially by the nineteenth-century German historian Leopold van Ranke.
Each source had to be situated in time and space, land, city and environment. After a source had been located, it was tested whether the content could correspond to historical reality. Is the source authentic, or perhaps forged? Is it consistent and coherent with true sources? And how do the oral, written and material sources from the period concerned relate to each other? Source criticism quickly became one of the most widely used methods in all sciences and the humanities.
Language and music grammar
An entirely different approach in humanities is the formulation of grammatical systems, especially for language, but also for music, film, literature and art. The notion of grammar was already used in Antiquity by the Greek linguist Dionysius Thrax in the 2nd century BC.
A grammar describes, on the basis of a finite number of rules, the possible combinations of words that result in correct sentences of a language. This notion of grammar, like source criticism, was further developed in the Renaissance, especially by the nineteenth-century linguist Franz Bopp and the twentieth-century linguist Noam Chomsky. The idea of grammar was also adopted by other humanities scholars.
Gallus Dressler, for example, already constructed a musical grammar in the 16th century that indicated which combinations of tones resulted in a particular musical genre, in his case the motet. And the literary scholar Vladimir Propp showed at the beginning of the twentieth century that Russian magic fairy tales were constructed according to precise rules of a narrative grammar.
'Immerse' in history
In addition to the source-critical and grammatical approach, there are also other methods that characterize the humanities. Thus, the so-called hermeneutical method deals with the interpretation of the products of the human mind. Like the source-critical and grammatical method, the hermeneutical method can also be traced back to Antiquity, in particular to the work of the philosopher Aristotle.
The interpretive approach was given a renewed impetus in the nineteenth century when the idea arose that every form of interpretation is context-dependent. A humanities scholar had to discover that context and be able to 'immerse' himself in a historical period. Only in this way could he come to a gradual understanding of a certain text, work of art or historical event.
The hermeneutical method is very different from the previously mentioned methods. An interpretation is by definition subjective in nature. In terms of method, the humanities therefore encompass the entire spectrum of research:from a subjectivistic, interpretive approach to an objectivistic, falsifying approach.
Srebrenica
What is the impact or scope of the discussed humanities methods? The importance of finding out the reliability of a source or drawing up a grammar is probably obvious, but it only becomes really exciting when these lead to concrete discoveries or insights.
The influence of source criticism is apparent from the illustrious study into the fall of Srebrenica in 1995 by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD). In 1996 the Dutch government commissioned this study for which thousands of written, oral and material sources were examined and compared – many of which were falsified.
The results of this investigation led to the conclusion that the Dutch government, although not guilty, was partly responsible for the fall of Srebrenica and the ensuing mass murder of eight thousand Muslim boys and men. Six days later, the Kok II cabinet fell over the Srebrenica drama. It shows the impact of humanities and in particular source research. In addition to political and historical truth-finding, source criticism is also frequently used for truth-finding in justice.
Computer languages
The impact of the grammatical approach is quite different. In the twentieth century, the rule system of a language grammar turned out to be very suitable for creating a completely different class of languages:higher programming languages for computers. Unlike lower-level programming languages, these types of programming languages do not use ones and zeros or machine-like codes, but "sentences" that resemble human language.
Virtually all higher programming languages are written in a form that uses the linguistic notion of a grammar. Thanks to the adoption of this linguistic idea, computer science took off enormously. Not only were better programming languages developed, but faster search algorithms could also be designed. And so it happened that a typical linguistic insight ended up in computer science and that this field, and with it information technology, received a huge impulse.
Find and interpret patterns
In short, humanities methods have led to new insights and unexpected discoveries. However, an overview of these alpha insights and discoveries and their underlying methods has long been elusive and has only recently been accomplished. The list of discoveries turns out to be much more impressive than expected.
For example, the humanities led to the discovery of kinship relationships between languages and thus between peoples, which was confirmed years later by genetic research. The humanities gave us the first critical analyzes of the medium of film and television and they continue to amaze us with new interpretations of literature, art, music and the past.
Finally:do the humanities differ from other sciences, such as the natural sciences, in their methods and insights? Yes and no. Yes, because the source-critical, grammatical, and hermeneutical method is not found in the natural sciences.
And no, because every method or approach involves a search for certain patterns, both in the humanities and natural sciences. Whether they apply to one historical period, style or person, to an entire language or language family, or even to be "universal" — eventually every scientist looks for patterns and tries to interpret them. That is what connects all sciences.