What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture

by Edward Slingerland

What Science Offers the Humanities examines some of the deep problems facing current approaches to the study of culture. It focuses especially 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Science, Philosophy, Social Science

390 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2007

About the author

I'm Distinguished University Scholar and Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia. I work in a lot of academic areas, including early Chinese thought, comparative religion, cognitive science of religion, virtue ethics, cognitive linguistics and science-humanities integration.

My first trade book, Trying Not to Try, was published by Crown/Random House in March 2014. My new book, Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization, is forthcoming from Little, Brown Spark on June 1, 2021. I have also published many academic books, translations, articles and book chapters.

For information about my books, articles, teaching and research, please see my personal website: edwardslingerland.com

Reviews

[Ben]

I have mixed feelings about this book. I support the central premise that the humanities can benefit from the sciences, and the author does an excellent job showing the weaknesses of the poles of objectivism and postmodernism by introducing insights and analyses gleaned from cognitive studies. He lost me, however, in the digression into Darwinism and the two "bad boys" of Dawkins and Dennett. Still the conclusion is well earned and I feel many in the humanities could benefit from this challenging work.

[Liam]

"Humans are robots that are designed [have evolved] to believe they are not robots"
The last few chapters are as good as any I've read at resolving the free will/determinism dilemma. The view from the inside is certainly of free will, the view from the outside is equally certain determinism. The objectivist view is the right one for analysis, but overly strict for guiding a life. Very well done. The critique of postmodernism and the failures of "humanists" is interesting to me but not the main interest.

[Timmy]

Dr. Slingerland offeres what is called a "consilience". I highly recommend someone who is interested in science AND humanites.

[Chris Callaway]

A challenging read, but thought-provoking. At the end of the day, though, I'm not sure I accept his argument that we need a substitute for what he calls "objectivism."

[Lina ౨ৎ]

Very well written but felt boring at times, overall informative