In the current era, marked by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and numerous technological challenges, the humanities and critical thinking are essential to make fair and ethical decisions, and ensure that technology respects human values. Aware of this situation, large technology companies have been betting for a few years on incorporating professionals from the humanities, in order to analyze and assess the impact and repercussions that their advances may have for humans in the immediate future.
The contributions made by humanistic knowledge in the field of health sciences are also very significant. The emergence of the so-called “medical humanities” or the broader Health Humanities, which for some decades now have been addressing central problems of medical education, “are allowing a progressive transformation of medicine that takes us from an instrumental and technical mentality to a more qualitative and democratic one in which patient care is established as the center of professional medical practice,” according to Dr. Albert Moya, vice dean of the Faculty of Humanities at UIC Barcelona. “The medical humanities are valuable in shaping the professional identity of the future healthcare provider, as well as in providing care training that allows the patient to be supported throughout their experience of health and illness,” adds the professor.
Creativity, innovation or originality are other skills most in demand by business sectors. According to Dr. Moya, “all of them inevitably involve the promotion of imagination, the root of which is found in the cultivation of humanistic knowledge that is capable of facilitating an opening to other worlds, just as art or literature does in an unparalleled way.” .
Given the social importance of the cultivation of this knowledge, the promotion of humanistic profiles should then be seen not only as a necessity, but rather as a duty. According to Dr. Moya “we are faced with a versatile and generalist profile that is professionally integrated into multiple sectors of the field of culture from a multidisciplinary perspective.” In this peculiar multidisciplinary condition, experts assure that the humanities offer irreplaceable resources and approaches and provide a privileged and precise look at the variable and complex human reality.
And yet, despite the growing labor demand for these professionals, the humanities "continue to suffer in our societies the discredit inherent to all that knowledge that has no immediate effective usefulness," says Professor Moya. In his opinion, “just as they have done in the past, the humanistic disciplines continue to row against the current to claim the inescapable value of training aimed at the personal core of the human being, a core that in no case can be quantified or associated with a instrumental or utilitarian purpose.
In this context, experts regret that the humanistic vocation of many young people is frustrated by this generalized discourse that still questions the usefulness of these studies today. According to the vice dean of Humanities, “a society that has difficulty managing inaccuracy, ambiguity or uncertainty feels uncomfortable with questions such as what a symphony, a novel or a work of art is for and, although we are aware that these human products can change a life or start a social revolution, it overwhelms us to think that we cannot foresee or calculate its possible effects.” In any case, he maintains, it is indisputable that “the majority of unsolvable questions based on quantitative schemes are those that have the greatest importance in our lives.”
Dr. Moya makes it clear that the humanities “are useful for many things and their professional possibilities are enormously broad, but the authentic contributions and benefits they make on a human level are not contained solely in their professional opportunities, they are much more structural.”
It is very common that the contributions and contributions made by humanists to society often go unnoticed, despite the fact that such essential aspects as the analysis and updating of the past, the formation of personal identity, the development of critical thinking depend on them. or the ability to make value judgments based on free and moral responsibility.
According to Professor Moya, the humanities contribute significantly “to enhancing all those aspects of the human being that address the meaning and value of the human experience from a qualitative perspective, given that science and technology are not capable of establishing themselves as factors.” generators of ultimate ends, nor therefore of creating values.”
The vice dean considers that the humanities maintain their own field of action in our time and contribute effectively to the reflection, analysis and diagnosis of real human needs. However, they are never exempt from the danger of being subjected to neutralization or dissolution. In his opinion, “soft” humanities would be reduced to mere economically profitable cultural products through which only homogeneous thought can be maintained, a fact that would mean their loss of critical and transformative potential.”
The preservation of humanistic knowledge thus remains in the hands of the Humanities graduate, who at the end of his or her university itinerary becomes “a direct testimony of those immemorial treasures that make up inherited humanistic knowledge, that is, of that record of human experience.” accumulated throughout history with which we must always continue to dialogue, for better and for worse, without stopping thinking about ourselves,” says Professor Moya. And he ends by stating that “humanistic knowledge, if well received, allows us to point beyond ourselves, to areas in which commitment and social coexistence improve our shared universes and in which a hopeful and transformative spirit can fertilize.” .
The unique skills and perspectives provided by training in the humanities are therefore essential to face a constantly changing future that requires professionals with analytical skills, critical thinking and the ability to understand the complexity of human relationships.
