A Futurist Turn in the Humanities

Abstract

The creative aspect of the humanities has not yet found its recognition in the established classification of academic disciplines. The crucial question may be formulated as follows: are the humanities a purely scholarly field, or should there be some active, constructive supplement to them? There are three major branches of knowledge established in academia: natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Technology serves as the practical extension (“application”) of the natural sciences, and politics as the extension of the social sciences. Both technology and politics are designed to transform what their respective disciplines study: nature and society. Is there, then, any activity in the humanities that would correspond to this transformative status of technology and politics? In the following schema, the third line demonstrates a blank space, indicating the open status of the practical applications of the humanities: