The Triglav Circle met via Zoom on the 18th of January
After a hiatus of several months to study and reflect on the substance and importance of relations between the physical and formal sciences and humanities, the Zoom meeting took place 18 January 2025 in two, three hour Zoom sessions: early morning [9-12 Paris time] and afternoon [15-18 Paris time], respectively, to offer participants from either hemisphere opportunity to contribute to the conversation.
Read more: The Humanities and the Sciences: Alternative and Mutually Supporting Sources of Knowledge.The focus of this 2025 Zoom session on “The Humanities and the Sciences as Alternative and Mutually Supporting Sources of Knowledge,” is a timely topic as many universities are significantly cutting humanities courses from their curriculums and dramatically reducing budgets for them. It also appears that attendance at classical cultural events in major cities are in decline.
I am indebted to participants Konrad Raiser, Arthur Dahl, and also Laura Baudot, professor of humanities and associate dean at Oberlin College, for their advice and ideas as to what is really at stake in the apparent wide spread decline in interest in the humanities and the increasing dominance of the physical sciences.
“The world needs thinkers as well as practioners.” And, in most circumstances the world needs them to enrich each other’s research about the possible substance that should advance thinking about the relationship between the sciences and humanities. Also it is necessary to consider how they may be addressed as mutually reinforcing disciplines of knowledge and how they are each particularly shaped to respond to relevant questions concerning humanity.
You will find in the website below under the concern: culture, art and education, a background paper covering different approaches to the topic. They include:
- Introduction of the two disciplines, brief comments on their historic origins and the present situation
- Ways to blend philosophic and poetic thinking and scientific facts in respect to understanding and protecting nature
- The fundamental role of the humanities in the establishing ethics and determining values
- Appreciation of truths offered in poetry and thoughts of philosophers in the sciences when language is restricted to observable phenomena
- The entanglement of the humanities and sciences in searching for reality in the space where materiality breaks down into waves and particles of energy leaving only thinking to interpret what is happening above and beyond the geosphere [biosphere, noosphere, and artificial intelligence {AI}].
Barbara Baudot
Coordinator of the Circle.
Link to the Agenda
Link to the Background paper
Link to the Note