Irish Venice T. Orleans BN 4B E (MT) 1. Meaning and Importance of Humanities a.

Meaning: - Humanities are academic disciplines that study the human condition, using methods that are primarily analytical, critical, or speculative, as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of the natural sciences. The humanities include ancient and modern languages, literature, history, philosophy, religion, and visual and performing arts such as music and theatre. The humanities that are also regarded as social sciences include technology, history, anthropology, area studies, communication studies, cultural studies, law and linguistics. b. Importance: The importance of humanities lies in studying and understanding what makes a community different from our own. For example, one who is able to understand the cultural life, which can be said to be the understanding of people and their ways of thinking. Also, with a better understanding of why a country completes a task the way they do, outsiders are able to broaden their thinking and to be more accepting of the differences between foreign cultures and their own. Since the humanities involve the acquisition of large amounts of information about the world and humanity, it requires that people develop critical thinking skills in order to process and analyze the information. This is a skill that translates into other realms of our life, and it can provide benefits to other areas of study. In addition to critical thinking skills, by encountering the creative works of others throughout human history, we are challenged to develop their own creative thinking skills, which can prove useful for solving problems that they encounter in the future. Another benefit that is often put forth by educators is that the humanities give us a wide perspective on the course of human events. It is this perspective that allows us to imagine the ways that other people live their lives, which offers us a greater ability to understand others as well as ourselves. 2. Definitions of ART as defined by different people Art is not, as the metaphysicians say, the manifestation of some mysterious idea of beauty or God; it is not, as the aesthetical physiologists say, a game in which man lets off his excess of stored-up energy; it is not the expression of mans emotions by external signs; it is not the production of pleasing objects; and, above all, it is not pleasure; but it is a means of union among men, joining them together in the same feelings, and indispensable for the life and progress toward well-being of individuals and of humanity. - Leo Tolstoy Art is a discovery and development of elementary principles of nature into beautiful forms suitable for human use. Frank Lloyd Wright, writing in 1957, as cited in Frank Lloyd Wright on Architecture, Nature, and the Human Spirit: A Collection of Quotations. Art resides in the quality of doing; process is not magic. - Charles Eames, cited in the fantastic 100 Quotes by Charles Eames Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. - Thomas Merton in No Man Is An Island

This is the power of art: The power to transcend our own self-interest, our solipsistic zoom-lens on life, and relate to the world and each other with more integrity, more curiosity, more wholeheartedness. - Maria Popova

3. Own definition of Humanities The study of the humanities is the study of philosophy, music, literature, history, art, religion and other subjects from cultures across the world. Someone who is well-versed in the subject of the humanities has an advantage compared to someone who is not. 4. Scope of Humanities: a. Visual Art - it means the use of this activity in combination with drawing, composition and other aesthetic considerations in order to manifest the expressive and conceptual intention of the practitioner. Painting is also used to express spiritual motifs and ideas. b. Literature - covers a variety of uses of language including prose forms (novel), poetry and drama, also lies at the heart of the modern humanities curriculum. College-level programs in a foreign language usually include study of important works of the literature in that language, as well as the language itself. c. Drama and Theatre - branch of the performing arts concerned with acting out stories in front of an audience using combinations of speech, gesture, music, dance, sound and spectacle. In addition to the standard narrative dialogue style, theatre takes such forms as opera, ballet, mime, kabuki, classical Indian dance, Chinese opera, mummers' plays, and pantomime. d. Music - Music as an academic discipline can take a number of different paths, including music performance, music education, musicology, music theory and composition. In the liberal arts tradition, music is also used to broaden skills of non-musicians by teaching skills such as concentration and listening. e. Dance - generally refers to human movement either used as a form of expression or presented in a social, spiritual or performance setting. Dance is also used to describe methods of non-verbal communication between humans or animals (bee dance, mating dance), and motion in inanimate objects (the leaves danced in the wind). 5. Relation of Humanities to other Arts and Sciences There are certainly multiple ways of thinking about and acting out the interplay between the distinct, unique and finite, and the inclusive, universal and eternal qualities of our lives, between our human diversity and shared humanity. The Wagon Wheel is but one approach. As suggested by Tom Yellowtail, the Wagon Wheel narrative acknowledges the importance and viability of each differentiated spoke, be it of a social, religious or some other cognitive or behavioral category, and of maintaining the equality of each relative to the others. Nevertheless, all spokes are united by an anchoring hub and all-embracing rim, by some form of universality shared by all. For Yellowtail this appreciation allowed him to successfully travel the many distinct spokes in his life, without conflict, a balancing of the turning wheel.