by Gary C. Gibson

Created on: October 21, 2009   Last Updated: October 24, 2009

A term like 'humanities' changes a lot over time. There are different element s comprising the set of its composition. We like the University of Paris as an early contributor to the humanities. Before the advent of modern science language, linguistics and logic tended to comprise the humanities while the arts were more hands-on and had the most students.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Paris

We cannot overlook the Academy founded by Plato in 387 B.C. that continued until the year 83 b.c Its curriculum included philosophical studies that would today be included within the school of humanities at many colleges.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Academy

Certainly religious colleges would not be considered to be humanistic schools today, yet that may be a matter of modern political correctness that falls away as one looks back to the first millenium origins of religious schools as law, language, history and theology colleges that produced many theologically minded philosophers as well.

Pre-Socratic Ionian schools of philosophy such as that of Parmenides also researched mathematical knowledge that would one day be included on the Arts and Sciences curriculum. The renewal of the Academy of Plato in the 6th century a.d. for about one hundred years perhaps contributed to neo-Platonism with its brilliant magnum opus The Enneads of Plotinus.

In the early history of the United States the regency at Albany founded by Alexander Hamilton that would one day be eponymous for the Regents College of the University of the State of N.Y. later changed to Excelsior College. This college including the humanities graduated students from Lebanon to Alaska yielding interesting products in the humanities such as 'The Alexander Archipelago;Transition Space'.

The Celtic Christian Church of Ireland was a keeper of humanities alive during the dark ages of Europe following the fall of the Roman Empire. The book of Kells is a brilliant illuminated manuscript still existent at the long hall of Trinity College Dublin. After the Irish monks re=established monasteries in Northern Europe they became centers of learning many humanities including rhetoric and grammar.

The City of Baghdad and of Babylon, near geographically if not temporally were centers of learning including in math. The 60 minute hour is an inheritance from the ancient Babylonian system. During the Muhammadanist era Baghdad was again a cultural center, and former President Bush has enable Baghdad to be the center of another cultural period of productivity while that of Texas falters a little as it has deep federal debt and illegal Mexican invasion reducing its cultural advance.

http://www.icoi.net/article/baghdad_through_years_an d_tears

The humanities have tended to progress when the tide of barbarian invasion has been stemmed. Modern deficit spending barbarians and external proletariats disinterested in the humanities and preferring drug gangsterism and illegal laboring in foreign lands to rule expand displacing culture are advancing in America yet decreasing in Baghdad. George W. Bush is considered by some to be the honorary 'Caliph of Baghdad'.

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