Specialization and standardization have shrunk humanistic research since 1957

Evidence

All this was obviously undermined and destroyed in Germany by National Socialism. After the war, Auerbach notes mournfully, the standardization of ideas, and greater and greater specialization of knowledge, gradually narrowed the opportunities for the kind of investigative and everlastingly inquiring kind of philological work that he had represented, and, alas, it’s an even more depressing fact that, since Auerbach’s death in 1957, both the idea and practice of humanistic research have shrunk in scope as well as in centrality. The book culture based on archival research as well as general principles of mind that once sustained humanism as a historical discipline have almost disappeared. Instead of reading in the real sense of the word, our students today are often distracted by the fragmented knowledge available on the internet and in the mass media. — Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 43

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• XREF: Echoes the Frankfurt School critique of instrumental rationality and the narrowing of knowledge — a pillar of the critical-theory vocabulary this module scaffolds.