Exceptional Measures: The Human Sciences in STEM Worlds

Humanist studies focus primarily on phenomena that is singular, idiosyncratic, and – in a word – personal. As such, they can appear to lack the procedural rigor that we rightly associate with STEM disciplines: Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. But the rigor of humanist studies is not STEM-deficient, it is just STEM-different. Humanities is not an idea but a practice, not a theory but a method. And the state of our social and cultural life today underscores our urgent, ongoing, and very practical need for rigorous humanist ethics. By Jerome McGann, University of Virginia professor. Free, open to the public.