In Germany, under the influence of the philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey (1833 1911), the hermeneutic approach was conceived as definitive of the humane sciences (history, sociology, anthropology) as distinct from the natural ones.
Compassion for animals in laboratories is not "sentimentality"; it goes hand-in-hand with compassion for humans, both of which would be served by leaving cruel and demonstrably unnecessary monkey experiments behind in favour of truly humane and human-relevant science.
Dr. Andrew Huang, Professor of Medicine at Duke since 1982, has had an abiding interest in the intersection of the humanities with the practice of medicine, which is the most human (and we hope humane) of all the sciences.
Keynes came from the heart of a Cambridge tradition (later continued in that other Cambridge in Massachusetts) that saw economics as a humane discipline or moral science, providing tools for earnest attempts to do good in the world.
A girl sits by a window watching him, "a lone clumsy man running"; while Janna Levin, professor of physics and astronomy at Columbia University, whose first book was the concise yet disturbingly humane work of popular science, How the Universe Got Its Spots, watches them both, ready to insert herself into her own novel with the precision of a mathematician.
We've actually done pretty well in the last few centuries, despite their periodic horrors, centuries in which unlovely things like markets and capitalism, tempered by humane social interventions, brilliant science and the rule of law, have overwhelmed the primitive, impoverished authoritarianism of the past.
Nevada was the first to implement death by lethal gas, in 1921, after again asserting that it was "the most humane manner known to modern science".
Pleasing Democrats and moderate Republicans, he signed a humane law banning the junk-science practice of "gay conversion therapy" on minors.
For now, those of us who care about helping people with addiction and using science to guide more humane approaches to drugs should be bracing for a tough fight ahead.
