Questions about the value of the humanities and the relationship between the sciences and humanities have been very much in the news recently. Notable intellectuals, like Stanley Fish, Steven Pinker, Philip Kitcher, Daniel Dennett, and Martha Nussbaum, have all weighed in on the discussion. Public opinion is shifting in favor of science and tech education.

There are two related challenges:

1) There is a threat to the perceived value of the humanities in the culture at large. This manifests itself in two ways: reduced public support for humanities research, and students being steered away from studying the humanities in university. Criticism from those who say ‘tell us why we should invest resources in humanities education, why parent should spend good money to have their children study French literature, or why the state should subsidize degrees in philosophy. Science and engineering degrees can be viewed as effective ways of getting jobs and we (as a country) need more scientists and engineers, but what is a degree in cultural anthropology worth?’

2) And then there is the threat to the humanities mounted by people likeAlex Rosenbergand thatPhillip Kitcheris addressing in his work. The claim is that in a scientific world-view the human sciences will ultimately be absorbed into (or replaced by) the hard sciences, and there will be no place for the humanities as a source of knowledge (as against, a diversion, entertainment, distraction). We are, on this view, bits of matter, alongside other bits of matter, governed by material laws. Understanding ourselves is not different in principle from understanding celery or cells. The great complexity of the human has fostered the illusion that human behavior is special, different in kind, but that position is indefensible from the point of view of science.

On the face of it, these are two quite difference challenges. In response to the second, the position that some have retreated to is to relinquish the claim that the humanities provide a source of knowledge and hold that it ‘makes our lives better’ in other ways. In response to the first, some have argued that contrary to appearances, a humanities education will make you a better lawyer, businessman, get you a better job, make you better at public relations.Martha Nussbaum认为它能让你成为更好的公民，因此对城邦的成功至关重要。A more dismissive answer is provided byStanley Fishwho rejects corporate or economic values as the sole, or ultimate arbiter of value. Why should the humanities have to justify themselves by those standards any more than corporate values have to justify themselves by the standards of the humanities? You might make more money as an engineer, but you will be culturally illiterate, historically ignorant, and uninsightful. I believe that this is the right form for an answer, but Fish makes it sound as though the humanities are a pleasurable diversion that ought to be valued as entertainment.

A deeper answer would address the real issue about what kind of value the humanities have. Such an answer would involve an examination of what education isfor并对教育应以何种理解为目标提出了清晰的概念。这种表述方式让它更接近基切尔的问题，所以这些问题是相互关联的。

I would suggest that a naturalistic conception of the human being and its place in nature provides the answer to these challenges by showing that the humanities seek a kind of understanding that (i) science tells us is indispensable, and (ii) is not something science can deliver.

The old reductionism that used to hold that all of science would ultimately be absorbed into physics has gone out of vogue. For reasons having to do with emergence and complexity, it is now understood that the special sciences provide new laws and counterfactual supporting generalizations that can’t be strictly deduced from the underlying physics. But there is something more specific that pertains in particular to the human sciences, that hasn’t been so widely recognized, and that is directly relevant to whether humanities will be displaced by physics.

Here’s what science tells us about ourselves: we arechoosers. The general laws of physics together with the on-board machinery are designed to make the behavior of the individual human being not simply the product of external circumstance and internal hard-wiring, but a process called choice which brings into the pathways between stimulus and responses memories and beliefs acquired over the course of personal history and encoded in the soft structure in the brain. The fact that our human behavior is governed (partly) by choice has implications.

Choice is a method of ensuring effective unpredictability. It means that understanding one another will not be a matter of knowing the physical laws. Although we are physical systems, and fall under the scope of general laws, knowing the laws of physics is for practical purposes useless for predicting the behavior of the individual human being. Without full, detailed, precise microscopic knowledge of a person’s microstate together with full, detailed, precise microscopic knowledge of a cross section of her back light cone, and assurance that nothing will enter her light cone from outside, we can derive close to nothing about how a person will behave.

如果我们的目标是预测人类行为，物理定律就没有帮助了，原因是物理定律捕捉到的是普遍性，而人类个体的行为对特殊性是高度敏感的。理解彼此(知道我们为什么会这样做，我们在未来或在可能出现的条件下会如何行动)需要理解人们是如何工作的，当他们被建模为人，也就是，作为信徒和代理人。这需要理解行为如何取决于个人历史和信仰的特殊性。这是人文教育带来的一种理解。阅读小说是一种了解另一个人内心复杂而隐秘的内心世界的方式。研究历史是一种理解支配历史潮流的复杂文化潮流的方式。对语言和艺术的研究也做出了贡献。

So from a third person perspective, if we want to understand systems whose behavior is governed by choice – i.e., to know what makes them tick, to guess how they will respond, and to influence their behavior, and to interact with them effectively – we have to get good atpsychologicalinterpretation. We have to become skilled at reasons explanations and belief/desire psychology, and we have to become sensitive to emotional dynamics and good at communicating. We need to understand one another, not in the way that we understand toasters and electrons, but as human beings.

但还有更多的东西。我们想要的这种理解不仅仅是能够预测他人的行为，而是能够通过他们的眼睛看问题，公平，慷慨，感同身受。我们是群居动物;我们是伴侣、朋友、同事、母亲、爱人、老板和老师。我们在更实质性的、更有道德意义的意义上理解对方越好，我们在所有这些能力上就会越好。这种人类的理解不是从物理定律中可以得到的。

The importance of the humanities is even more pressing from a first-person perspective because of the impossibility of taking a passive stance towards one’sownchoices. Early on in life, much of what you believe and do is the product of parents, education, and circumstance. But increasingly as you grow, you are faced with choices and become the product of those choices. Ultimately, we what we choose to make of our histories and circumstances. In this sense, we are all inescapably the authors of our lives. No one will make our choices for us. A humanities education will both help us learn how to live both by opening up the imagination to the rich array of possibilities of what to be, and helping us to understand the consequences of our choices.

了解我们自己永远是一门艺术，而不是一门科学，因为它涉及一种创造。