LettersToday’s humanists don’t deserve the likes of a Fields Medal
Readers discuss recognition for humanities scholars, and the challenges of ethnic minority children in Chinese language acquisition
As the bearer of a doctoral degree in English literature, I can confirm that major awards spur innovation and achievement, inspiring scholars to seek out the highest mountains of the mind. Why, then, is there no Fields Medal for historians, literary critics, philosophers and their ilk?
After considering this question for the better part of a decade, I have arrived at a rather depressing answer: humanists simply don’t deserve one.
Your correspondent notes that humanities “produce forms of knowledge whose impact is often difficult to quantify”. I wish this were true. The main difference between the sciences and the humanities does not have to do with quantifiability. It has to do with what passes for knowledge in the first place.
During my more than 10 years in the academy, I found humanists operated under a categorically different model from, say, mathematicians and physicists. Whereas scientists generally try to uncover permanent laws that reveal the objective truths of the universe, humanists generally seek to produce popular paradigm shifts from the work of earlier generations.