I believe that humanities and Social sciences can provide a hypothesis about change, and offer different ways to look at norms, values and social boundaries with perhaps an objective view.

I believe that humanities and Social sciences can provide a hypothesis about change, and offer different ways to look at norms, values and social boundaries with perhaps an objective view.

I absolutely agree with you my friend, Abdalla. Humanists and social scientists are engineers of a creative mind!

Dear Prof Marwan and friends, have a look at this:

'Because Liberal Arts – and in particular the humanities – were always the preserve of the elite, they have retained an aura of providing people with “higher skills”: creativity, critical thinking, cultural awareness, problem solving, communication skills, and so forth.'

Although I'm from hard science background, I became interested in Music and Education Psychology.

http://higheredstrategy.com/the-benefits-of-liberal-arts-are-humanities-fit-for-purpose/

Many decisions in education are based on human feelings studied in humanities/social sciences, or not? How to provoke feelings that improve efficiency in education practice?

Humanities and Social Sciences faculties study a wide range of disciplines, including languages, ethics, history and culture, social science, philosophy, and psychology. In many universities, they usually host the largest undergraduate and postgraduate students in universities.

Humanities and social sciences, already contribute a lot to higher education. However we should not forget that as far as there are two cultures the contribution will be limited. When i am saying "Two Cultures" I am referring  to:

Snow, Charles Percy (2001) [1959]. The Two Cultures. London: Cambridge University Press.

His thesis is: "The Two Cultures is the title of the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow.[1][2] Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures — namely the sciences and the humanities — and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems."

Is there a possibility of synthesising the two Cultures?  Mathematics and hard science tent to use more and more "soft techniques", on the other hand humanities try to use statistics and other mathematics.  thus there should be a limit where the two processes will meet. Then I think we shall have the maximum of contributions to higher education.

I'm very much impressed by the quality and depth of your insights into this complex issue, dear Costas, Mahfouz and Marcel, where we have maximum contribution to higher education, as Costas rightly suggests!

Dear Marwan,

Dear All,

I do not know social sciences’ impact but regarding humanities I think that the rate of humanity teaching is too poor in the curricula of students learning natural sciences and technology. I feel that being familiar with humanities may contribute to deeper as well as nature and culture nearer specialized knowledge in such scientific fields. Many sided cultural backgrounds are prerequisites of a good specialist. Many students cannot read and write properly and a lot of them are not capable to express themselves.

Dear @Marwan, I think that humanities and social sciences can help constructing hypotheses to better understand human and life.

True, dear Andras and Abedallah, humanities may contribute to a deeper understanding  of nature, culture and life , building bridges among our different nations and communities! 

What is the difference between education taking empathy into account and education not taking empathy into account? Is empathy only studies in the humanities/social sciences? Some are interested in the underlying mechanisms of empathy to increase predictive power.

I'm not so sure about empathy, dear Marcel, but I'm sure about mankind, dear Arno, that a human being is a human being regardless of race and ethnicity! 

I cannot agree any less, dear Arno! Very fine thought to me.

It is a theoretical discussion far a way from reality. Observing what is happening in real time I agree with Michael Boulton   who stress a new hypothesis to fully understand the input and out put of this issue. I observed many PhD holders who are in the field, what are their contribution to reality and to society changes? I think education lack good application on these issues or lack good concepts to be spread in to society for developmental changes. I wish to see great uprising in the education which imply what Marwan said(HAS GOT TO HAVE A PHILOSOPHY and conduct a STRATEGY, also wrapped up with some ethics and psychology, essential traits that are crucially needed by those in touch with students. )

If science education helps in making a guitar, humanities/arts education helps us to enjoy the music. The world may live (and would have lived for ever more) if Newton had not 'stood on the shoulders of giants' or if Einstein had not stumbled upon the theory of relativity. But just imagine there was no Shakespeare or Mozart or Beethovan or Davinci; or for that matter, imagine the world without Jalaludin Rumi or Omar Quyyam or Kalidas or sant kabir or Rabindranath Tagore....Can we really think of spending time with our children narrating atomic theory or rocket science to them at bed time? We need loads of history with Alexander, Gandhi, Omar Mukhtar, Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks and even Adolf Hitler to engage with them. E=MC2 would hardly make bringing them up interesting. After all, education is not about imparting X knowledge to get a Y job; it is about the art of man making - an art, not a science.

The farmer in sub Saharan Africa can live without the combines and harvesters that science can get him, but can he live without the songs that his forefathers taught him to sing during harvest?

No sir, I do not think that the world can exist without humanities/arts. If it can, it would be like Mars, with nothing on it to make a song and dance about.

I do not think that the world can exist without humanities/arts either, my friend Srinivasan!

Thanks for sharing this informative response with me, dear Francesca!