The Decline and Fall of the English Major

I think I understand why you would accuse the humanities of being "rotten", but I'm not sure it captures my own experience of the malaise affecting college humanities departments (at least what I witnessed, with a somewhat jaundiced eye). I would say that the humanities is deeply conflicted about its purpose and relevance, and maybe even its approach and techniques. That there is little, if any, consensus on these questions. That there isn't even any agreement on whether consensus is desirable, even a surface consensus for the benefit of students. That cynicism, confusion, uncertainty and fear are rife and toxic in the minds of faculty and administration. That this is in many ways a reflection of the mind of society at large, especially our leadership, actual or effective.

On the other hand, the purpose of technical training is less contentious, and it's focus is generally not challenged much. There are questions about technique and content, and there is wide variance in teaching talent, but overall, most scientific disciplines have done a good job of building a reasonable syllabus based on foundational theory and mixed practise. We can feel confident after taking a scientific that we have acquired some amount of true knowledge and useful understanding.

But the exact opposite seems to be true of humanities, whether studied institutionally or privately. The same questions which have haunted us since the beginning of human history still haunt us today. These questions are all philosophical; the best, most honest answer to virtually all of them is, still, "We don't know." Throughout history, numerous people, including many undoubted geniuses, have suggested answers and made tremendous arguments. Today, many of those answers are still compelling, but, over time, their justifications have eroded under scrutiny. The more we look at human nature, and the more anecdotal evidence we collect, the more we fail to understand it.

That is the nature of art and letters: it is a vast and ever-growing accumulation of mostly anecdotal evidence which intelligent, talented and persuasive people throughout history have tried to use to validate their own opinions of the nature of human nature, life and existence. And most of it, no matter how beautifully presented, is all so much empty rhetoric, and completely unproven.

A programme in humanities, therefor, amounts to a lot of time and energy spent studying well-spoken (or otherwise well-illustrated), but failed attempts to provide insight into the core questions of philosophy. Many have embraced this uncertainty, but not answering a question is still a kind of answer. It never definitively proves that the question is invalid. And yet few seem willing to accept, and virtually none are satisfied with the truth: "We don't know."

As a result, the programme has degenerated into a cacophony. And yet, for the purposes of administrative coherence and the need to fulfill some sort of comprehensible structure, in order to reliably function in a standardized institutional setting, we still offer "courses" with focused areas of subject, and degrees made of such courses. Faculty members must continue to publish papers and/or creative works of their own. In all ways, schools must continue to behave as though they had some kind of coherent sense of their purpose and significance, despite a complete lack of any such belief in anyone's mind. We continue to allow these so-called specialists to decide, on society's (or at least education's) behalf what it means to study, find value, and finally "understand" these questions, or at least the techniques of, and approaches to, attempting to answer them.

So what we have is a sort of free-for-all disguised as a serious occupation, and a large body of highly paid specialists essentially run amok. No one knows what they are trying to accomplish, or what their level of success is or has been, so we just take them on their word that they are doing it, or that at least they are trying. With each passing year, the map of the territory continues to grow, but we are no better equipped to navigate through it. At least, it seems that the tools that educators and researchers might be using, from the social sciences, are not being used in ways which might help them, at least with any real scientific rigour. On the contrary, science continues to be misunderstood, misinterpreted and misapplied by humanities faculty, to the detriment of everyone (themselves, their students, and society and culture at large).

One of the most important features of the scientific programme is that of prioritizing knowledge based on our confidence in its truth and reliability. While historians of science may continue to study the failed efforts and discredited theories of the past, we do not, as a rule, teach these to practising scientists and engineers. They represent curiosities, or negative lessons in how to study science. The humanities either cannot, or will not, follow suit. The most important fight in the history of humanities was that over the "canon", and it was a decisive loss for everyone. There is no accepted way to prioritize works. The yardstick of truth is not applicable. Beauty, subject matter, technique, form: all are matters of taste. And the simple and undeniable fact is that you cannot study taste. You can study matter and technique, and to some extent you can judge the difference between the attempt and the result, but even that has its detractors. When truth cannot be known, every opinion is valid, and no arguments are final.

Attempting to endure this nightmare of existential uncertainty is attractive to very few people. For those who enjoy art, and would like to spend their days discussing it, and especially those who like having an audience for their own opinions, for which they have a rather high regard, academia is an attractive option. No one can prove you wrong, but popularity can prove your right, at least for a time.

Interestingly, this isn't that different from software start-ups, which are, more and more, about popularity and fashion than they are about inventing new things and the transforming the world.

At the point you've learned how to construct an argument and substantiate it with supporting claims, you're ready to leave it behind for longer (or shorter!), less structured forms... or to pull it back out when you feel it's appropriate.