{"id":323,"date":"2010-11-15T14:07:22","date_gmt":"2010-11-15T18:07:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/?p=323"},"modified":"2010-11-15T14:10:19","modified_gmt":"2010-11-15T18:10:19","slug":"a-faustian-bargain-on-the-value-of-the-humanities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/2010\/11\/15\/a-faustian-bargain-on-the-value-of-the-humanities\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8216;A Faustian bargain&#8217;: on the value of the humanities"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Perhaps my own background will interest you. I started out as a classics major. I&#8217;m now Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry. Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, the ones that have benefited me the most in my career as a scientist are the courses in classics, art history, sociology, and English literature. These courses didn&#8217;t just give me a much better appreciation for my own culture; they taught me how to think, to analyze, and to write clearly. None of my sciences courses did any of that.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&#8212; from Prof. Gregory Petsko&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/genomebiology.com\/2010\/11\/10\/138\">open letter<\/a> to the President of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.albany.edu\/\">SUNY-Albany<\/a>, in response to the announcement that the departments of French, Italian, Classics, Russian and Theater Arts at that school <a href=\"http:\/\/www.petitiononline.com\/SUNY\/\">are being shuttered<\/a>. Prof. Petsko writes <a href=\"http:\/\/genomebiology.com\/search\/results?drpField1=&amp;txtSearch1=&amp;drpPhrase1=and&amp;drpField2=[TI]&amp;txtSearch2=&amp;drpPhrase2=and&amp;drpField3=[AU]&amp;txtSearch3=&amp;drpPhrase3=and&amp;drpField4=&amp;txtSearch4=&amp;drpPhrase4=and&amp;articleType=Comment&amp;drpOrderBy=by+date&amp;drpPerPage=25&amp;search-button=Search\">a monthly column<\/a> for <em>Genome Biology<\/em>, on the relationship between science and society. Core students &#8212; no strangers themselves to the value of the humanities, as well as the social and natural sciences &#8212; will recognize the references elsewhere in his letter to the writings of Dostoevsky, Dante, Voltaire, and Goethe.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Perhaps my own background will interest you. I started out as a classics major. I&#8217;m now Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry. Of all the courses I took in college and graduate school, the ones that have benefited me the most in my career as a scientist are the courses in classics, art history, sociology, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1284,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2671,3715,4151],"tags":[3832],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1284"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":327,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323\/revisions\/327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/core\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}