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  1. Home
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  3. What Science Offers the Humanities
  • Cited by 119
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
June 2012
Print publication year:
2008
Online ISBN:
9780511841163
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511841163
Subjects:
Religion, Psychology, Psychology: General Interest, Religion: General Interest
Information

Book description

What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing the study of culture. It focuses on the excesses of postmodernism, but also acknowledges serious problems with postmodernism's harshest critics. In short, Edward Slingerland argues that in order for the humanities to progress, its scholars need to take seriously contributions from the natural sciences - and particular research on human cognition - which demonstrate that any separation of the mind and the body is entirely untenable. The author provides suggestions for how humanists might begin to utilize these scientific discoveries without conceding that science has the last word on morality, religion, art, and literature. Calling into question such deeply entrenched dogmas as the 'blank slate' theory of nature, strong social constructivism, and the ideal of disembodied reason, What Science Offers the Humanities replaces the human-sciences divide with a more integrated approach to the study of culture.

Reviews

'… intellectually acute, wide-ranging, well-written, and deeply knowledgeable survey of the hard and soft disciplines behind consciousness …'

Source: Science

'I greatly enjoyed and admired Slingerland's What Science Offers the Humanities, and recommend it highly. It not only addresses a weariness and lack of curiosity at the heart of some major areas in the humanities, but is also very adept at summing up the best thinking in the natural sciences. It teems with ideas that will intrigue and delight an open mind, and is also lively and positive in its bridge building. Slingerland shows real intellectual brio. This is an important book.'

Ian McEwan - bestselling author of Atonement and On Chesil Beach

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