Integrating the Sciences and Humanities
· Knowledge should be viewed as an integrated whole
· The humanities can clarify, motivate, and help interpret the sciences
· The sciences can confirm, challenge, and build upon the humanities
Flourishing, Knowledge, and the Human Flourishing Program
The two-fold aim of the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard University is (i) to study and promote human flourishing, and (ii) to develop and implement systematic approaches to the synthesis of knowledge across disciplines. Both aims have been foundational to our work from the Program’s very beginning. To date, we’ve arguably advanced considerably further with the first of these aims than the second; and our knowledge of flourishing will be rapidly expanding yet further still with the many forthcoming papers from our Global Flourishing Study. Our second aim of synthesizing knowledge across disciplines has also been important to our work, and is manifest not least in wide range of disciplines represented in our Program staff, which has included psychology, sociology, education, public health, statistics, philosophy, theology, ethics, history, and others. However, working out how knowledge and methodologies in each of these disciplines are related to each other is not straightforward. Developing systematic approaches to synthesizing such knowledge is challenging. Earlier this year, however, we published a paper summarizing some of our reflections that have emerged from our work together on how the humanities can inform and enrich the social and biomedical sciences, and likewise on how the sciences can inform and enrich the humanities.
Humanities Contributing to the Social and Biomedical Sciences
Our paper is shaped around six “modes,” which have emerged from our work, as to how these various disciplines can contribute to each other. There is no claim in the paper that these six modes are exhaustive. The paper is thus principally a documentation of the contributions of one set of disciplines to the other that we’ve seen over and over again. Each of the modes themselves could benefit from further development and systematization and we hope to carry out such work in the years ahead. However, it seemed good also to summarize, and illustrate, our current thinking on this task of integration.
One clear contribution that the humanities can make to the social sciences is bringing conceptual clarity and drawing of relevant distinctions. Indeed, some take drawing of distinctions to be one of, if not the, central task of philosophy. This can be relevant both in ensuring that there are precise definitions being used in the social sciences, but also in clarifying distinctions between concepts and constructs. We’ve benefitted tremendously from this at the Human Flourishing Program, and it has influenced our work in measure development, including drawing relevant distinctions between hope and optimism, developing more grounded measures of suffering, and in more comprehensively measuring meaning.
A second potential contribution of the humanities to the social sciences is to motivate research and formulate hypotheses that arise from various philosophical and theological traditions. Our project, and deep investment in research and measure development, on love and human flourishing effectively arose out of the insistence of so many of the world’s religions on the centrality of love to human life, human society, spirituality, and human well-being. Likewise the central role of character in philosophical understanding of well-being has motivated much of our own empirical work, and has done so with much of our work on suffering as well.
A third potential contribution of the humanities to the social sciences is enriching, and refining, the interpretation of empirical results. We’ve carried out such deeper philosophical or theological interpretation of empirical results on a number of topics ranging from social connectedness, to deaths of despair, to health itself, and its relation to religion.
The Sciences’ Contribution to the Humanities
While we have benefitted considerably from making use of philosophy and theology in our empirical work (and from having philosophers and theologians on our staff), the social and biomedical sciences have also regularly contributed to the humanistic scholarship at the Program in a number of ways.
First, empirical research can sometimes help confirm or refute claims made in philosophical or theological literatures. Some of our work has confirmed theological claims that spiritual practice is generally conducive to well-being. Conversely, philosophical claims have sometimes been made that pondering the vastness of the universe or the unlikelihood of one’s own birth may lead to feelings of meaningless, whereas empirical work on this topic may suggest the opposite.
Second, empirical research can sometimes supply new data for philosophical and theological reflection. There are long-standing philosophical and theological traditions that suffering can sometimes be a pathway for growth, development, character transformation, and future flourishing. While this growth may take place for some, our empirical research has suggested that this is certainly not the average experience. This can in turn prompt both further philosophical and theological reflection on the kinds of responses to suffering that in fact do enable growth and future flourishing (and this can then motivate yet further empirical research as well) and this is an area of work we are now actively pursuing.
Third, the empirical sciences can sometimes help develop and evaluate the effects of practices which philosophical or theological traditions suggest may be conducive to well-being. Indeed, this is essentially the work we carried out in the randomized trial of a forgiveness workbook intervention which showed effects also on decreasing depression and anxiety, and increasing hope and flourishing. This then subsequently motivated past and new ongoing work on forgiveness campaigns (and for which we are pleased to announce, and grateful for, new funding from the Bancel Philanthropies to continue to advance our forgiveness campaign and dissemination efforts). Clearly the sciences can build upon, develop further, and implement the rich insights of the humanities.
As noted above, these various modes concerning how the sciences and humanities can inform and enrich one another are in no way intended to be exhaustive, but these are modes we’ve seen arise, again and again, in our and others’ work, and further illustrations are given in our paper.
Integration and Incarnation
The relation of the disciplines to one another is an important topic and will continue to shape our work. As noted above, one of those disciplines that we regularly draw upon is theology. Our work has often drawn upon ideas across the world religious traditions, but a number, though certainly not all, of our staff approach this from a Christian perspective, reflecting on the nature of and the relation between God and creation, and also on what this means for flourishing here on earth, as illustrated also in my own recent book on a Theology of Health.
One of the deepest mysteries pondered in the Christian faith and in Christian theology is what Christians all over the world remember and celebrate at Christmas — the incarnation: the joining of God’s nature with human nature in the person of Jesus Christ. Many Christian confessions affirm that Christ’s divine and human natures are united “without division or confusion.” We seek a similar union of apparent opposites in our work of integrating the humanities and social sciences, allowing each to inform and enrich the other, while retaining its own integrity of method and subject.
Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birth as a sign and act of God’s love, and one that allows us to better understand the nature of love, and the nature of God, and which provides the potential for a fuller restoration of human nature, and further, in the life of Jesus, provides an example of love for us to follow. As we continue to ponder insights arising from a range of disciplines and our knowledge of flourishing, let us also, in this season, seek that knowledge, and that flourishing, that comes from seeking to love one another, and seeking together the source of that love.
John L. Loeb and Frances Lehman Loeb Professor of Epidemiology, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health
Director, Human Flourishing Program, Harvard University
The Human Flourishing Program grants reporters and journalists permission to re-use and quote any of the above material, provided proper attribution is given.
The Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science aims to study and promote human flourishing, and to develop systematic approaches to the synthesis of knowledge across disciplines. You can sign up here for a monthly research e-mail from the Human Flourishing Program, or click here to follow us on Twitter. For past postings please see our Psychology Today Human Flourishing Blog.
Reference
Case, W.B. and VanderWeele, T.J. (2024). Integrating the humanities and social sciences: six approaches and case studies. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 11, 231.
Related Articles
Hope and Rational Optimism. Psychology Today. Human Flourishing Blog. November 2024.
A Theology of Health and Human Flourishing. Psychology Today. Human Flourishing Blog. October 2024.
Making the Religion-Health Research Foundation Even Stronger. Psychology Today. Human Flourishing Blog. December 2023.
Love to Overcome Hate. Psychology Today. Human Flourishing Blog. October 2023.
The Power of Forgiveness. Psychology Today. Human Flourishing Blog. April 2023.
Lighting the Darkness of Suffering. Psychology Today. Human Flourishing Blog. November 2022.
Deaths of Despair and the Role of Religion. Psychology Today. Human Flourishing Blog. May 2020.
