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Humanities

Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture, including certain fundamental questions asked by humans. During the Renaissance, the term 'humanities' referred to the study of classical literature and language, as opposed to the study of religion or 'divinity.' The study of the humanities was a key part of the secular curriculum in universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently defined as any fields of study outside of natural sciences, social sciences, formal sciences (like mathematics), and applied sciences (or professional training). They use methods that are primarily critical, speculative, or interpretative and have a significant historical element —as distinguished from the mainly empirical approaches of science.

The humanities include the studies of philosophy, religion, history, language arts (literature, writing, oratory, rhetoric, poetry, etc.), performing arts (theater, music, dance, etc.), and visual arts (painting, sculpture, photography, filmmaking, etc.).

Some definitions of the humanities encompass law and religion due to their shared characteristics, such as the study of language and culture. However, these definitions are not universally accepted, as law and religion are often considered professional subjects rather than humanities subjects. Professional subjects, like some social sciences, are sometimes classified as being part of both the liberal arts and professional development education, whereas humanities subjects are generally confined to the traditional liberal arts education. Although sociology, anthropology, archaeology, linguistics and psychology share some similarities with the humanities, these are often considered social sciences. Similarly, disciplines such as finance, business administration, political science, economics, and global studies have closer ties to the social sciences rather than the humanities.

Scholars in the humanities are called humanities scholars or sometimes humanists. The term humanist also describes the philosophical position of humanism, which antihumanist scholars in the humanities reject. Renaissance scholars and artists are also known as humanists. Some secondary schools offer humanities classes usually consisting of literature, history, foreign language, and art.

Human disciplines like history and language mainly use the comparative method and comparative research. Other methods used in the humanities include hermeneutics, source criticism, esthetic interpretation, and speculative reason.

Etymology
The word humanities comes from the Renaissance Latin phrase studia humanitatis, which translates to study of humanity. This phrase was used to refer to the study of classical literature and language, which was seen as an important aspect of a refined education in the Renaissance. In its usage in the early 15th century, the studia humanitatis was a course of studies that consisted of grammar, poetry, rhetoric, history, and moral philosophy, primarily derived from the study of Latin and Greek classics. The word humanitas also gave rise to the Renaissance Italian neologism umanisti, whence "humanist", "Renaissance humanism".

Classics
Classics, in the Western academic tradition, refers to the studies of the cultures of classical antiquity, namely Ancient Greek and Latin and the Ancient Greek and Roman cultures. Classical studies is considered one of the cornerstones of the humanities; however, its popularity declined during the 20th century. Nevertheless, the influence of classical ideas on many humanities disciplines, such as philosophy and literature, remains strong.

History
History is systematically collected information about the past. When used as the name of a field of study, history refers to the study and interpretation of the record of humans, societies, institutions, and any topic that has changed over time.

Traditionally, the study of history has been considered a part of the humanities. In modern academia, history can occasionally be classified as a social science, though this definition is contested.

Language
While the scientific study of language is known as linguistics and is generally considered a social science, a natural science or a cognitive science, the study of languages is also central to the humanities. A good deal of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy has been devoted to the analysis of language and to the question of whether, as Wittgenstein claimed, many of our philosophical confusions derive from the vocabulary we use; literary theory has explored the rhetorical, associative, and ordering features of language; and historical linguists have studied the development of languages across time. Literature, covering a variety of uses of language including prose forms (such as the 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.

Law
In everyday language, law refers to a rule that is enforced by a governing institution, as opposed to a moral or ethical rule that is not subject to formal enforcement. The study of law can be seen as either a social science or a humanities discipline, depending on one's perspective. Some see it as a social science because of its objective and measurable nature, while others view it as a humanities discipline because of its focus on values and interpretation. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. Law has been defined in various ways, such as "a system of rules", "an interpretive concept" for achieving justice, "an authority" to mediate between people's interests, or "the command of a sovereign" backed by the threat of punishment.

However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy is shaped by the practical application of ideas from many social science and humanities disciplines, including philosophy, history, political science, economics, anthropology, and sociology. Law is politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. Law is also economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law, labour law, company law and many more can have long-lasting effects on how productivity is organised and the distribution of wealth. The noun law derives from the Old English word lagu, meaning something laid down or fixed, and the adjective legal comes from the Latin word LEX.

Literature
Literature is a term that does not have a universally accepted definition, but which has variably included all written work; writing that possesses literary merit; and language that emphasizes its own literary features, as opposed to ordinary language. Etymologically the term derives from the Latin word literatura/litteratura which means "writing formed with letters", although some definitions include spoken or sung texts. Literature can be classified as fiction or non-fiction; poetry or prose. It can be further distinguished according to major forms such as the novel, short story or drama; and works are often categorised according to historical periods, or according to their adherence to certain aesthetic features or expectations (genre).

Philosophy
Philosophy—etymologically, the "love of wisdom"—is generally the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, justification, truth, justice, right and wrong, beauty, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these issues by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument, rather than experiments (experimental philosophy being an exception).

Philosophy used to be a very comprehensive term, including what have subsequently become separate disciplines, such as physics. (As Immanuel Kant noted, "Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic.") Today, the main fields of philosophy are logic, ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology. Still, it continues to overlap with other disciplines. The field of semantics, for example, brings philosophy into contact with linguistics.

Since the early twentieth century, philosophy in English-speaking universities has moved away from the humanities and closer to the formal sciences, becoming much more analytic. Analytic philosophy is marked by emphasis on the use of logic and formal methods of reasoning, conceptual analysis, and the use of symbolic and/or mathematical logic, as contrasted with the Continental style of philosophy. This method of inquiry is largely indebted to the work of philosophers such as Gottlob Frege, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein.

Religion
Religious Studies is commonly regarded as a social science. Based on current knowledge, it seems that all known cultures, both in the past and present, have some form of belief system or religious practice. While there may be isolated individuals or groups who do not practice any form of religion, it is not known if there has ever been a society that was entirely devoid of religious belief. The definition of religion is not universal, and different cultures may have different ideas about what constitutes religion. Religion may be characterized with a community since humans are social animals. Rituals are used to bound the community together. Social animals require rules. Ethics is a requirement of society, but not a requirement of religion. Shinto, Daoism, and other folk or natural religions do not have ethical codes. While some religions do include the concept of deities, others do not. Therefore, the supernatural does not necessarily require the existence of deities. Rather, it can be broadly defined as any phenomena that cannot be explained by science or reason. Magical thinking creates explanations not available for empirical verification. Stories or myths are narratives being both didactic and entertaining. They are necessary for understanding the human predicament. Some other possible characteristics of religion are pollutions and purification, the sacred and the profane, sacred texts, religious institutions and organizations, and sacrifice and prayer. Some of the major problems that religions confront, and attempts to answer are chaos, suffering, evil, and death.

The non-founder religions are Hinduism, Shinto, and native or folk religions. Founder religions are Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Confucianism, Daoism, Mormonism, Jainism, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and the Baháʼí Faith. Religions must adapt and change through the generations because they must remain relevant to the adherents. When traditional religions fail to address new concerns, then new religions will emerge.

Performing arts
The performing arts differ from the visual arts in that the former uses the artist's own body, face, and presence as a medium, and the latter uses materials such as clay, metal, or paint, which can be molded or transformed to create some art object. Performing arts include acrobatics, busking, comedy, dance, film, magic, music, opera, juggling, marching arts, such as brass bands, and theatre.

Artists who participate in these arts in front of an audience are called performers, including actors, comedians, dancers, musicians, and singers. Performing arts are also supported by workers in related fields, such as songwriting and stagecraft. Performers often adapt their appearance, such as with costumes and stage makeup, etc. There is also a specialized form of fine art in which the artists perform their work live to an audience. This is called Performance art. Most performance art also involves some form of plastic art, perhaps in the creation of props. Dance was often referred to as a plastic art during the Modern dance era.

Musicology
Musicology as an academic discipline can take a number of different paths, including historical musicology, music literature, ethnomusicology and music theory. Undergraduate music majors generally take courses in all of these areas, while graduate students focus on a particular path. In the liberal arts tradition, musicology is also used to broaden skills of non-musicians by teaching skills, including concentration and listening.

Theatre
Theatre (or theater) (Greek "theatron", θέατρον) is the 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 — indeed any one or more elements of the other performing arts. 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.

Dance
Dance (from Old French dancier, perhaps from Frankish) 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 (see body language) between humans or animals (bee dance, mating dance), and motion in inanimate objects (the leaves danced in the wind). Choreography is the process of creating dances, and the people who create choreography are known as choreographers. Choreographers use movement, music, and other elements to create expressive and artistic dances. They may work alone or with other artists to create new works, and their work can be presented in a variety of settings, from small dance studios to large theaters.

Definitions of what constitutes dance are dependent on social, cultural, aesthetic, artistic, and moral constraints and range from functional movement (such as Folk dance) to codified, virtuoso techniques such as ballet.

History of visual arts
The great traditions in art have a foundation in the art of one of the ancient civilizations, such as Ancient Japan, Greece and Rome, China, India, Greater Nepal, Mesopotamia and Mesoamerica.

Ancient Greek art saw a veneration of the human physical form and the development of equivalent skills to show musculature, poise, beauty and anatomically correct proportions. Ancient Roman art depicted gods as idealized humans, shown with characteristic distinguishing features (e.g., Zeus' thunderbolt).

The emphasis on spiritual and religious themes in Byzantine and Gothic art of the Middle Ages reflected the dominance of the church. However, in the Renaissance, a renewed focus on the physical world was reflected in art forms that depicted the human body and landscape in a more naturalistic and three-dimensional way.

Eastern art has generally worked in a style akin to Western medieval art, namely a concentration on surface patterning and local colour (meaning the plain colour of an object, such as basic red for a red robe, rather than the modulations of that colour brought about by light, shade and reflection). A characteristic of this style is that the local colour is often defined by an outline (a contemporary equivalent is the cartoon). This is evident in, for example, the art of India, Tibet and Japan.

Religious Islamic art forbids iconography, and expresses religious ideas through geometry instead. The physical and rational certainties depicted by the 19th-century Enlightenment were shattered not only by new discoveries of relativity by Einstein and of unseen psychology by Freud, but also by unprecedented technological development. Increasing global interaction during this time saw an equivalent influence of other cultures into Western art.

Drawing
Drawing is a means of making a picture, using a wide variety of tools and techniques. It generally involves making marks on a surface by applying pressure from a tool, or moving a tool across a surface. Common tools are graphite pencils, pen and ink, inked brushes, wax color pencils, crayons, charcoals, pastels, and markers. Digital tools that simulate the effects of these are also used. The main techniques used in drawing are: line drawing, hatching, crosshatching, random hatching, scribbling, stippling, and blending. A computer aided designer who excels in technical drawing is referred to as a draftsman or draughtsman.

Painting
Literally, painting is the practice of applying pigment suspended in a carrier (or medium) and a binding agent (a glue) to a surface (support) such as paper, canvas or a wall. However, when used in an artistic sense, 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 has been used throughout history to express spiritual and religious ideas, from mythological scenes on pottery to the frescoes of the Sistine Chapel, to body art.

Colour is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but elsewhere white may be. Some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, Isaac Newton, have written their own colour theories. Moreover, the use of language is only a generalization for a colour equivalent. The word "red", for example, can cover a wide range of variations on the pure red of the spectrum. Unlike music, where notes such as C or C# are universally accepted, there is no formalized register of colors. However, the Pantone system is widely used in the printing and design industry to standardize color reproduction.

Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, for example, collage. This began with cubism and is not painting in strict sense. Some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of these are the works of Jean Dubuffet or Anselm Kiefer. Modern and contemporary art has moved away from the historic value of craft in favour of concept (conceptual art); this has led some e.g. Joseph Kosuth to say that painting, as a serious art form, is dead, although this has not deterred the majority of artists from continuing to practise it either as whole or part of their work.

Sculpture involves creating three-dimensional forms out of various materials. These typically include malleable substances like clay and metal but may also extend to material that is cut or shaved down to the desired form, like stone and wood.

History
In the West, the history of the humanities can be traced to ancient Greece, as the basis of a broad education for citizens. During Roman times, the concept of the seven liberal arts evolved, involving grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium), along with arithmetic, geometry, astronomy and music (the quadrivium). These subjects formed the bulk of medieval education, with the emphasis being on the humanities as skills or "ways of doing".

A major shift occurred with the Renaissance humanism of the fifteenth century, when the humanities began to be regarded as subjects to study rather than practice, with a corresponding shift away from traditional fields into areas such as literature and history (studia humaniora). In the 20th century, this view was in turn challenged by the postmodernist movement, which sought to redefine the humanities in more egalitarian terms suitable for a democratic society since the Greek and Roman societies in which the humanities originated were elitist and aristocratic.

A distinction is usually drawn between the social sciences and the humanities. Classicist Allan Bloom writes in The Closing of the American Mind (1987): "Social science and humanities have a mutual contempt for one another, the former looking down on the latter as unscientific, the latter regarding the former as philistine. […] The difference comes down to the fact that social science really wants to be predictive, meaning that man is predictable, while the humanities say that he is not."

Education and employment
For many decades, there has been a growing public perception that a humanities education inadequately prepares graduates for employment. The common belief is that graduates from such programs face underemployment and incomes too low for a humanities education to be worth the investment.

Humanities graduates find employment in a wide variety of management and professional occupations. In Britain, for example, over 11,000 humanities majors found employment in the following occupations: Many humanities graduates may find themselves with no specific career goals upon graduation, which can lead to lower incomes in the early stages of their career. On the other hand, graduates from more career-oriented programs often find jobs more quickly. However, the long-term career prospects of humanities graduates may be similar to those of other graduates, as research shows that by five years after graduation, they generally find a career path that appeals to them.
 * Education (25.8%)
 * Management (19.8%)
 * Media/Literature/Arts (11.4%)
 * Law (11.3%)
 * Finance (10.4%)
 * Civil service (5.8%)
 * Not-for-profit (5.2%)
 * Marketing (2.3%)
 * Medicine (1.7%)
 * Other (6.4%)

There is empirical evidence that graduates from humanities programs earn less than graduates from other university programs. However, the empirical evidence also shows that humanities graduates still earn notably higher incomes than workers with no postsecondary education, and have job satisfaction levels comparable to their peers from other fields. Humanities graduates also earn more as their careers progress; ten years after graduation, the income difference between humanities graduates and graduates from other university programs is no longer statistically significant. Humanities graduates can boost their incomes if they obtain advanced or professional degrees.

The Humanities Indicators
The Humanities Indicators, unveiled in 2009 by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, are the first comprehensive compilation of data about the humanities in the United States, providing scholars, policymakers and the public with detailed information on humanities education from primary to higher education, the humanities workforce, humanities funding and research, and public humanities activities. Modeled after the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators, the Humanities Indicators are a source of reliable benchmarks to guide analysis of the state of the humanities in the United States.

The Humanities in American Life
The 1980 United States Rockefeller Commission on the Humanities described the humanities in its report, The Humanities in American Life: "Through the humanities we reflect on the fundamental question: What does it mean to be human? The humanities offer clues but never a complete answer. They reveal how people have tried to make moral, spiritual, and intellectual sense of a world where irrationality, despair, loneliness, and death are as conspicuous as birth, friendship, hope, and reason."

As a major
In 1950, 1.2% of Americans aged 22 had earned a degree in the humanities. By 2010, this figure had risen to 2.6%. This represents a doubling of the number of Americans with degrees in the humanities over a 60-year period. The increase in the number of Americans with humanities degrees is in part due to the overall rise in college enrollment in the United States. In 1940, 4.6% of Americans had a four-year degree, but by 2016, this figure had risen to 33.4%. This means that the total number of Americans with college degrees has increased significantly, resulting in a greater number of people with degrees in the humanities as well. The proportion of degrees awarded in the humanities has declined in recent decades, even as the overall number of people with humanities degrees has increased. In 1954, 36 percent of Harvard undergraduates majored in the humanities, but in 2012, only 20 percent took that course of study. As recently as 1993, the humanities accounted for 15% of the bachelor's degrees awarded by colleges and universities in the United States. As of 2022, they accounted for less than 9%.

In liberal arts education
The Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences 2013 report, The Heart of the Matter, supports the notion of a broad "liberal arts education", which includes study in disciplines from the natural sciences to the arts as well as the humanities.

Many colleges provide such an education; some require it. The University of Chicago and Columbia University were among the first schools to require an extensive core curriculum in philosophy, literature, and the arts for all students. Other colleges with nationally recognized, mandatory programs in the liberal arts are Fordham University, St. John's College, Saint Anselm College and Providence College. Prominent proponents of liberal arts in the United States have included Mortimer J. Adler and E. D. Hirsch, Jr.

In the digital age
Researchers in the humanities have developed numerous large- and small-scale digital corporations, such as digitized collections of historical texts, along with the digital tools and methods to analyze them. Their aim is both to uncover new knowledge about corpora and to visualize research data in new and revealing ways. Much of this activity occurs in a field called the digital humanities.

STEM
Politicians in the United States currently espouse a need for increased funding of the STEM fields, science, technology, engineering, mathematics. Federal funding represents a much smaller fraction of funding for humanities than other fields such as STEM or medicine. The result was a decline of quality in both college and pre-college education in the humanities field.

Three-term Louisiana Governor, Edwin Edwards acknowledged the importance of the humanities in a 2014 video address to the academic conference, Revolutions in Eighteenth-Century Sociability. Edwards said:
 * Without the humanities to teach us how history has succeeded or failed in directing the fruits of technology and science to the betterment of our tribe of homo sapiens, without the humanities to teach us how to frame the discussion and to properly debate the uses-and the costs-of technology, without the humanities to teach us how to safely debate how to create a more just society with our fellow man and woman, technology and science would eventually default to the ownership of—and misuse by—the most influential, the most powerful, the most feared among us.

The value of the humanities debate
The contemporary debate in the field of critical university studies centers around the declining value of the humanities. As in America, there is a perceived decline in interest within higher education policy in research that is qualitative and does not produce marketable products. This threat can be seen in a variety of forms across Europe, but much critical attention has been given to the field of research assessment in particular. For example, the UK [Research Excellence Framework] has been subject to criticism due to its assessment criteria from across the humanities, and indeed, the social sciences. In particular, the notion of "impact" has generated significant debate.

Citizenship and self-reflection
Since the late 19th century, a central justification for the humanities has been that it aids and encourages self-reflection—a self-reflection that, in turn, helps develop personal consciousness or an active sense of civic duty.

Wilhelm Dilthey and Hans-Georg Gadamer centered the humanities' attempt to distinguish itself from the natural sciences in humankind's urge to understand its own experiences. This understanding, they claimed, ties like-minded people from similar cultural backgrounds together and provides a sense of cultural continuity with the philosophical past.

Scholars in the late 20th and early 21st centuries extended that "narrative imagination" to the ability to understand the records of lived experiences outside of one's own individual social and cultural context. Through that narrative imagination, it is claimed, humanities scholars and students develop a conscience more suited to the multicultural world we live in. That conscience might take the form of a passive one that allows more effective self-reflection or extend into active empathy that facilitates the dispensation of civic duties a responsible world citizen must engage in. There is disagreement, however, on the level of influence humanities study can have on an individual and whether or not the understanding produced in humanistic enterprise can guarantee an "identifiable positive effect on people".

Humanities and the transhumanities
There are three major branches in the human sciences (humanities). These are the natural sciences, the social sciences, and the cultural sciences. Technology is the practical extension of the natural sciences, as politics is the extension of the social sciences. Similarly, the cultural sciences have their own practical extension, sometimes called "culturonics" (Mikhail Epstein's term). The three extensions can be combined to form the transhumanities. Technology, politics and culturonics are designed to transform what their respective disciplines study: nature, society, and culture. The field of transformative humanities includes various practicies and technologies, for example, language planning, the construction of new languages, like Esperanto, and invention of new artistic and literary genres and movements in the genre of manifesto, like Romanticism, Symbolism, or Surrealism. Humanistic invention in the sphere of culture, as a practice complementary to scholarship, is an important aspect of the humanities.
 * Nature – natural sciences – technology – transformation of nature
 * Society – social sciences – politics – transformation of society
 * Culture – cultural sciences – culturonics – transformation of culture
 * Culture – cultural sciences – culturonics – transformation of culture
 * Culture – cultural sciences – culturonics – transformation of culture

Truth and meaning
The divide between humanistic study and natural sciences informs arguments of meaning in humanities as well. What distinguishes the humanities from the natural sciences is not a certain subject matter, but rather the mode of approach to any question. Humanities focuses on understanding meaning, purpose, and goals and furthers the appreciation of singular historical and social phenomena—an interpretive method of finding "truth"—rather than explaining the causality of events or uncovering the truth of the natural world. Apart from its societal application, narrative imagination is an important tool in the (re)production of understood meaning in history, culture and literature.

Imagination, as part of the tool kit of artists or scholars, helps create meaning that invokes a response from an audience. Since a humanities scholar is always within the nexus of lived experiences, no "absolute" knowledge is theoretically possible; knowledge is instead a ceaseless procedure of inventing and reinventing the context a text is read in. Poststructuralism has problematized an approach to the humanistic study based on questions of meaning, intentionality, and authorship. In the wake of the death of the author proclaimed by Roland Barthes, various theoretical currents such as deconstruction and discourse analysis seek to expose the ideologies and rhetoric operative in producing both the purportedly meaningful objects and the hermeneutic subjects of humanistic study. This exposure has opened up the interpretive structures of the humanities to criticism that humanities scholarship is "unscientific" and therefore unfit for inclusion in modern university curricula because of the very nature of its changing contextual meaning.

Pleasure, the pursuit of knowledge and scholarship
Some, like Stanley Fish, have claimed that the humanities can defend themselves best by refusing to make any claims of utility. (Fish may well be thinking primarily of literary study, rather than history and philosophy.) Any attempt to justify the humanities in terms of outside benefits such as social usefulness (say increased productivity) or in terms of ennobling effects on the individual (such as greater wisdom or diminished prejudice) is ungrounded, according to Fish, and simply places impossible demands on the relevant academic departments. Furthermore, critical thinking, while arguably a result of humanistic training, can be acquired in other contexts. And the humanities do not even provide any more the kind of social cachet (what sociologists sometimes call "cultural capital") that was helpful to succeed in Western society before the age of mass education following World War II.

Instead, scholars like Fish suggest that the humanities offer a unique kind of pleasure, a pleasure based on the common pursuit of knowledge (even if it is only disciplinary knowledge). Such pleasure contrasts with the increasing privatization of leisure and instant gratification characteristic of Western culture; it thus meets Jürgen Habermas' requirements for the disregard of social status and rational problematization of previously unquestioned areas necessary for an endeavor which takes place in the bourgeois public sphere. In this argument, then, only the academic pursuit of pleasure can provide a link between the private and the public realm in modern Western consumer society and strengthen that public sphere that, according to many theorists, is the foundation for modern democracy.

Others, like Mark Bauerlein, argue that professors in the humanities have increasingly abandoned proven methods of epistemology (I care only about the quality of your arguments, not your conclusions.) in favor of indoctrination (I care only about your conclusions, not the quality of your arguments.). The result is that professors and their students adhere rigidly to a limited set of viewpoints, and have little interest in, or understanding of, opposing viewpoints. Once they obtain this intellectual self-satisfaction, persistent lapses in learning, research, and evaluation are common.

Romanticization and rejection
Implicit in many of these arguments supporting the humanities are the makings of arguments against public support of the humanities. Joseph Carroll asserts that we live in a changing world, a world where "cultural capital" is replaced with scientific literacy, and in which the romantic notion of a Renaissance humanities scholar is obsolete. Such arguments appeal to judgments and anxieties about the essential uselessness of the humanities, especially in an age when it is seemingly vitally important for scholars of literature, history and the arts to engage in "collaborative work with experimental scientists or even simply to make "intelligent use of the findings from empirical science."

Despite many humanities based arguments against the humanities some within the exact sciences have called for their return. In 2017, Science popularizer Bill Nye retracted previous claims about the supposed 'uselessness' of philosophy. As Bill Nye states, "People allude to Socrates and Plato and Aristotle all the time, and I think many of us who make those references don't have a solid grounding," he said. "It's good to know the history of philosophy." Scholars, such as biologist Scott F. Gilbert, make the claim that it is in fact the increasing predominance, leading to exclusivity, of scientific ways of thinking that need to be tempered by historical and social context. Gilbert worries that the commercialization that may be inherent in some ways of conceiving science (pursuit of funding, academic prestige etc.) need to be examined externally. Gilbert argues: "First of all, there is a very successful alternative to science as a commercialized march to 'progress.' This is the approach taken by the liberal arts college, a model that takes pride in seeing science in context and in integrating science with the humanities and social sciences."

title: Humanities


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Children's Online Privacy Protection Act

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA) is a United States federal law, located at.

The act, effective April 21, 2000, applies to the online collection of personal information by persons or entities under U.S. jurisdiction about children under 13 years of age, including children outside the U.S. if the website or service is U.S.-based. It details what a website operator must include in a privacy policy, when and how to seek verifiable consent from a parent or guardian, and what responsibilities an operator has to protect children's privacy and safety online, including restrictions on the marketing of those under 13.

Although children under 13 can legally give out personal information with their parents' permission, many websites—particularly social media sites, but also other sites that collect most personal info—disallow children under 13 from using their services altogether due to the cost and work involved in complying with the law.

An updated version of COPPA, the Children and Teens' Online Privacy Protection Act, informally called COPPA 2.0, has been introduced in the 118th Congress in 2023. COPPA 2.0 was again introduced in Congress on April 9, 2024 by representatives Tim Walberg and Kathy Castor. If adopted as proposed, it would effectively raise the age covered by COPPA from 13 to 16 years, prohibit targeted advertising to children and teens, and make certain other changes to COPPA.

Background
In the 1990s, electronic commerce was on its rise of popularity, but various concerns were expressed about the data collection practices and the impact of Internet commerce on user privacy—especially for children under 13, because very few websites had their own privacy policies. The Center for Media Education petitioned the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate the data collection and use practices of the KidsCom website, and take legal action since the data practices violated Section 5 of FTC Act concerning "unfair/deceptive practices." With the passing of the Drivers Privacy Protection Act in 1997, new precedents had been set in regard to the ability of congress to regulate information held by state agencies. After the FTC completed its investigation, it issued the "KidsCom Letter" the report stated that the data collection and use practices were indeed subject to legal action. This resulted in the need to inform parents about the risks of children's online privacy, as well as to parental consent necessity. This ultimately resulted in the drafting of COPPA.

The new millennium ushered in an era of regulation that many were simply unaware of. The early years of the transition were fraught with confusion and a lot of animosity. One of the main concerns of the time was the eventual accessibility of child-based websites at the fear many were unwilling to change their business practices. Many were left with a series of loose guidelines that determined what was correct. The simplification of COPPA provided by the FTC was met with a follow-up of demands to law enforcement that the: "... Commission should continue law enforcement efforts by targeting significant violations and seeking increasingly larger civil penalties, when appropriate, to deter unlawful conduct". A mandatory review of the COPPA regulations were conducted in 2005 (resulting with no changes to the original guidelines), found that there were no adverse effects to the online landscape.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has the authority to issue regulations and enforce COPPA. Also, under the terms of COPPA, the FTC-designated "safe harbor" provisioning is designed to encourage increased industrial self-regulation. Under this provision, industry groups and others may request Commission approval of self-regulatory guidelines to govern participants' compliance, such that website operators in Commission-approved programs would first be subject to the disciplinary procedures of the safe harbor program in lieu of FTC enforcement. the FTC has approved seven safe harbor programs operated by TrustArc, ESRB, CARU, PRIVO, Aristotle, Inc., Samet Privacy (kidSAFE), and the Internet Keep Safe Coalition (iKeepSafe). In August 2021, Aristotle, Inc. withdrew from the safe harbor program after FTC staff expressed serious concerns about its enforcement of its safe harbor provisions and communicated their intent to recommend the revocation of Aristotle's approval to run a safe harbor program. The FTC also announced its intention to more closely scrutinize the practices of the other six present safe harbors.

In September 2011, the FTC announced proposed revisions to the COPPA rules, the first significant changes to the act since the issuance of the rules in 2000. The proposed rule changes expanded the definition of what it meant to "collect" data from children. The proposed rules presented a data retention and deletion requirement, which mandated that data obtained from children be retained only for the amount of time necessary to achieve the purpose that it was collected for. It also added the requirement that operators ensure that any third parties to whom a child's information is disclosed have reasonable procedures in place to protect the information.

The act applies to websites and online services operated for commercial purposes that are either directed toward children under 13 or have actual knowledge that children under 13 are providing information online. Most recognized non-profit organizations are exempt from most of the requirements of COPPA. However, the Supreme Court ruled that non-profits operated for the benefit of their members' commercial activities are subject to FTC regulation and consequently COPPA as well. The type of "verifiable parental consent" that is required before collecting and using information provided by children under 13 is based upon a "sliding scale" set forth in a Federal Trade Commission regulation that takes into account the manner in which the information is being collected and the uses to which the information will be put.

Violations
According to the FTC, courts may fine violators of COPPA up to $50,120 in civil penalties for each violation. The FTC has brought a number of actions against website operators for failing to comply with COPPA requirements, including actions against Google, TikTok, Girls' Life, American Pop Corn Company, Lisa Frank, Inc., Mrs. Fields Cookies, and The Hershey Company.

In February 2004, UMG Recordings, Inc. was fined US$400,000 for COPPA violations in connection with a website that promoted the then 13-year-old rapper Lil' Romeo and hosted child-oriented games and activities, and Bonzi Software, which offered downloads of an animated figure "BonziBuddy" that provided shopping advice, jokes, and trivia was fined $75,000 for COPPA violations. Similarly, the owners of the Xanga website were fined US$1,000,000 in 2006 for COPPA violations of repeatedly allowing children under 13 to sign up for the service without getting their parent's consent.

In 2016, the mobile advertising network inMobi was fined US$950,000 for tracking the geo-location of all users (including those under 12) without their knowledge. The advertising software continuously tracked user location despite privacy preferences on the mobile device. Other websites that were directed towards children and fined due to COPPA include Imbee (2008), Kidswirl (2011) and Skid-e-Kids (2011).

In February 2019, the FTC issued a fine of $5.7 million to ByteDance for failing to comply with COPPA with their TikTok app (then called Musical.ly). ByteDance agreed to pay the largest COPPA fine since the bill's enactment and to add a kids-only mode to the TikTok app.

Three dating apps by Wildec were pulled by Apple and Google from their respective app stores, after the FTC determined that the dating apps allowed users under 13 to register, that Wildec knew there were significant numbers of minor users, and that this allowed inappropriate contact with minors.

On September 4, 2019, the FTC issued a fine of $170 million to YouTube for COPPA violations, including tracking the viewing history of minors in order to facilitate targeted advertising. Many notable social media platforms were subjected to scrutiny from the FTC, especially groups like Facebook where the platform had users ignoring COPPA guidelines since inception. As a result, YouTube announced that as part of the settlement, in 2020 it would require channel operators to mark videos that are "child-oriented" as such, and would use machine learning to automatically mark those as clearly "child-oriented" if not marked already. In the settlement terms, channel operators that failed to mark videos as "child-oriented" could be fined by the FTC for up to $42,530 per video, which has raised criticism towards the settlement terms. The decision came in terms that, despite good faith, created many issues among the content creators on the site. Users such as Ryan's World, Philip DeFranco and TheOdd1sOut with vastly different content found themselves in the hot seat for their appealing content for children. The following guidelines were implemented on the basis set by the following rules:

"The Rule sets out additional factors the FTC will consider in determining whether your content is child-directed:

 * the subject matter,
 * visual content,
 * the use of animated characters or child-oriented activities and incentives,
 * the kind of music or other audio content,
 * the age of models,
 * the presence of child celebrities or celebrities who appeal to children,
 * language or other characteristics of the site,
 * whether advertising that promotes or appears on the site is directed to children, and
 * competent and reliable empirical evidence about the age of the audience."

In 2022, Epic Games settled a Federal Trade Commission complaint in part by agreeing to pay a $275 million penalty for COPPA violations. The FTC complaint alleged that Epic illegally collected personal information from children under the age of 13 and made it difficult for parents to get such information deleted. The full agreement included an additional $245 million to refund users who were manipulated into making unintended purchases.

Compliance
In December 2012, the Federal Trade Commission issued revisions effective July 1, 2013, which created additional parental notice and consent requirements, amended definitions, and added other obligations for organizations that (1) operate a website or online service that is "directed to children" under 12 and that collects "personal information" from users or (2) knowingly collects personal information from people under 13 through a website or online service. After July 1, 2013, operators must:

 * Post a clear and comprehensive online privacy policy describing their information practices for personal information collected online from persons under age 13;
 * Make reasonable efforts (taking into account available technology) to provide direct notice to parents of the operator's practices with regard to the collection, use, or disclosure of personal information from persons under 13, including notice of any material change to such practices to which the parents have previously consented;
 * Obtain verifiable parental consent, with limited exceptions, prior to any collection, use, and/or disclosure of personal information from persons under age 13;
 * Provide a reasonable means for a parent to review the personal information collected from their child and to refuse to permit its further use or maintenance;
 * Establish and maintain reasonable procedures to protect the confidentiality, security, and integrity of the personal information collected from children under age 13, including by taking reasonable steps to disclose/release such personal information only to parties capable of maintaining its confidentiality and security; and
 * Retain personal information collected online from a child for only as long as is necessary to fulfill the purpose for which it was collected and delete the information using reasonable measures to protect against its unauthorized access or use.
 * Operators are prohibited from conditioning a child's participation in an online activity on the child providing more information than is reasonably necessary to participate in that activity.

According to a notice issued by the Federal Trade Commission, an operator has actual knowledge of a user's age if the site or service asks for—and receives—information from the user that allows it to determine the person's age. An example, cited by the FTC, includes an operator who asks for a date of birth on a site's registration page has actual knowledge as defined by COPPA if a user responds with a year that suggests they are under 13. Another example cited by the FTC is that an operator may have actual knowledge based on answers to "age identifying" questions like "What grade are you in?" or "What type of school do you go to? (a) elementary; (b) middle; (c) high school; (d) college."

A small fee was charged by Microsoft under COPPA as a way to verify parental consent. The fee was donated to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Google, however, charges a small fee as a way to verify one's date of birth.

In the changes effective July 1, 2013, the definition of an operator was updated to make clear that COPPA covers a child-directed site or service that integrates outside services, such as plug-ins or advertising networks, that collect personal information from its visitors. The definition of a website or online service directed to children is expanded to include plug-ins or ad networks that have actual knowledge that they are collecting personal information through a child-directed website or online service. Websites and services that target children as a secondary audience may differentiate among users, and are required to provide notice and obtain parental consent only for those users who identify themselves as being younger than 13. The definition of personal information requiring parental notice and consent before collection now includes "persistent identifiers" that can be used to recognize users over time and across different websites or online services. However, no parental notice and consent are required when an operator collects a persistent identifier for the sole purpose of supporting the website or online service's internal operations. The definition of personal information after July 1, 2013, also includes geolocation information, as well as photos, videos, and audio files that contain a child's image or voice.

On November 19, 2015, the FTC announced it had approved an additional method for obtaining verifiable parental consent: "face match to verified photo identification" (FMVPI). The two-step process allows a parent to submit a government-sanctioned ID for authentication, then submit an impromptu photo via mobile device or web camera, which is then compared to the photo on the ID.

International scope
The FTC has asserted that COPPA applies to any online service that is directed to U.S. users or knowingly collects information from children in the U.S., regardless of its country of origin. Referring to their official website, the following embodies such views:

The FTC's Office of International Affairs directs the agency's international activities for competition and consumer protection, which include:

 * strengthening relationships with foreign competition and consumer protection agencies
 * developing formal and informal arrangements and agreements with competition and consumer protection agencies around the world
 * engaging in cooperative dialogues and submitting reports at international forums for competition and consumer protection
 * helping agencies around the world develop and enhance their own competition and consumer protection programs
 * sharing information with foreign law enforcement authorities through the U.S. Safe Web Act
 * maintaining a robust International Fellows Program

However, the FTC rarely performs enforcement actions against foreign companies, and faces a number of practical challenges in doing so. The general assumption is that, despite the interconnected world of internet services, jurisdiction only applies to domestic operation. Nevertheless, it has successfully enforced COPPA against at least one foreign company with a significant US userbase, securing a $5.7 million settlement against the Chinese company ByteDance over their TikTok app.

Criticisms
COPPA is controversial and has been criticized as ineffective and potentially unconstitutional by legal experts and mass media since it was drafted. Complaints leveled against the legislation include website owners banning users 12 and under—which only "encourages age fraud and allows websites to bypass the burden of obtaining parental consent" —and the active suppression of children's rights to freedom of speech, self-expression, and other First Amendment rights due to necessity of registering accounts to do so.

Delays in obtaining parental consent often result in children moving on to other activities that are less appropriate for their age or pose bigger privacy risks.

In addition, age restrictions and the "parental consent" process are easy for children to circumvent, and parents generally help them to lie about their age.

An Internet Safety Technical Task Force composed of experts from academia and commercial companies found in 2012 that mandatory age verification is not only a poor solution for privacy but also constitutes a violation of privacy. The law has also many safety flaws. For example, it does not protect kids from predatory advertising, it does not prevent kids from accessing pornography or lying about their age, and it does not ensure a totally safe environment online. Tech journalist Larry Magid, a long-time vocal opponent of the law,  also notes that parents, not the government, hold the bulk of responsibility of protecting children online. COPPA has also been criticized for its potential chilling effect on children's apps, content, websites and online services. For example, Snapchat released a Snapkidz version of its app in June 2013, but unlike Snapchat, Snapkidz did not allow photo sharing at all due to COPPA regulations. Similarly, it has been pointed out that the COPPA Rule was not necessarily about privacy protection but more about "enforcing the laws."

COPPA's penalties ($40,000 per violation) can be potentially catastrophic for small businesses, undermining their business model. By contrast, the FTC has been criticized, including by COPPA author Ed Markey, and FTC commissioner Rohit Chopra, for not fining major and big tech companies harshly enough for their COPPA violations, especially in comparison to their revenue. In contrast, violators of the European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) may be fined up to 4% of their annual global revenue.

With the rise of virtual education, COPPA may inadequately represent the role of administrators, teachers, and the school in protecting student privacy under the assumption of loco parentis.

Mark Zuckerberg, co-founder and CEO of Facebook, expressed opposition to COPPA in 2011 and stated "That will be a fight we take on at some point. My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age." The next year, Jim Steyer, the CEO of Common Sense Media, has called for updates to COPPA, calling the time of the act's creation "the stone age of digital media" and pointing out the lack of platforms such as Google, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter at the time.

In 2019, the Government of the State of New York sued YouTube for violating COPPA by illegally retaining information related to children under 13 years of age. YouTube responded by dividing its content strictly into "for kids" and "not for kids". This has met with extremely harsh criticism from the YouTube community, especially from gamers, with many alleging that the FTC of the United States intends to fine content creators $42,530 for "each mislabeled video", possibly putting all users at risk. However, some have expressed skepticism over this, feeling that the fines may actually be in reference to civil penalties, possibly intended for the site's operators and/or warranted by more serious of COPPA violations or specific cases of "mislabeling videos". As of December 2022, no YouTuber has been fined.

Several bills have been proposed to amend COPPA. Markey and Josh Hawley introduced multiple bills (in the House in 2018 as the "Do Not Track Kids Act", and in 2019 as a Senate measure) proposing that COPPA ban the use of targeted advertising to users under 13, require personal consent before the collection of personal information from users ages 13–15, require connected devices and toys directed towards children to meet security standards and include a privacy policy disclosure on their packaging, and require services to offer an "eraser button" to "permit users to eliminate publicly available personal information content submitted by the child, when technologically feasible". In January 2020, Bobby Rush and Tim Walberg introduced a similar house bill known as the Preventing Real Online Threats Endangering Children Today (PROTECT Kids) Act, which would extend all existing COPPA consent requirements to users under the age of 16, and explicitly add mobile apps, "precise geolocation", and biometric data to its remit.

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