Aphorisms on the Academic Disciplines

Perhaps the most fundamental distinction to be made with respect to academic thought is the basic distinction between academic and public forms of thought.

Our word academic comes from the grove of Akademos, where the Greek philosopher Plato taught his students. As such, academic thought is that which occurs at institutions of higher learning.

Our word public comes from the Latin word publicus, “of the people, of the state.” Thus, public thought is that which occurs in government institutions and mass media publications.

At institutions of higher education, there is also a distinction to be made between academic and professional training.

Academic training involves the development of knowledge and intelligence, while professional training involves the development of vocational competence.

At institutions of higher education, there is a distinction often drawn between scientific and humanistic forms of thought.

The sciences include disciplines such as Biology, Chemistry, Physics, Astronomy, and the Earth Sciences (including Geology, Geography, Meteorology, Oceanography, etc.).

The humanities include disciplines such as Classics, History, Philosophy, Religion, Law, Literature, Linguistics, the Visual Arts (such as Painting, Photography, and Film) and the Performing Arts (such as Music, Theatre, and Dance).

Straddling the divide between scientific and humanistic forms of academic thought are the social sciences, those disciplines which study human events using the scientific method of the natural sciences.

In recent years, the fortunes of the sciences and the trades have been on the rise. The US Department of Education’s “Race to the Top” contest, which President Obama announced in his 2011 State of the Union address, really means “race to the top of math and science.” In 2014, Obama stated, “I promise you, folks can make a lot more, potentially, with skilled manufacturing or the trades than they might with an art history degree.” He immediately back-pedalled (“Now, nothing wrong with an art history degree – I love art history. So I don’t want to get a bunch of emails.”), and he later apologized (while Marco Rubio, a Republican senator planning to run for president in 2016, condemned the apology as “pathetic”: “We do need more degrees that lead to #jobs”).

Meanwhile, the humanities have been forced to defend themselves at every juncture (viz. the Harvard Humanities Project and Martha Nussbaum’s Not for Profit: Why Democracy Needs the Humanities [2012] ).