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Research Guides

What are the Humanities?

The liberal arts can be divided into the physical science, the social sciences, and the
humanities. The humanities include the academic disciplines of philosophy, religion,
languages and literatures, linguistics, history, and the arts. The arts include the visual
arts, drama, and music. The humanities are those academic disciplines that study
human culture. The humanities use methods that are primarily critical, or speculative,
and have a significant historical perspective. In both the social sciences and the
physical sciences, the empirical method is a way of gaining knowledge by means of
direct and indirect observation or experience. Recording of one's direct observations or
experiences can be analyzed quantitatively, as most of the research in the biological
and natural sciences demonstrates, or qualitatively, that is often used by the social
sciences. The methodology employed by humanities is not singular. Indeed, each
subject area has contributed a methodology. History, which can be considered both a
social science and a humanities, uses the historical method; philosophy uses
conceptual analysis or phenomenology, religion and languages and literature use
methodologies derived from textual criticism.

This Guide will conclude with a unified methodology that Dr. Ross Scimeca and Dr.
Robert Labaree refer to as the ​synoptic method​ that may be useful for not only the
humanities but also for the more humanistic social sciences, such as anthropology,
psychology, and sociology.

This Humanities Research Strategies Guide was co-authored by Dr. Ross

Scimeca and Dr. Melissa L. Miller.
The Origin of the Four Methodologies

The ​historical method​ is the oldest of the four methodologies used in the humanities.
What this methodology attempts to do is look at a given period of time that is first
defined and temporally delineated, and then analyze texts and recorded events within
that perspective.

Textual criticism​ is strictly concerned with the analysis of a given text regardless of
discipline. It is used primarily in literature, i.e., literary criticism, and in the nineteenth
century, the “higher criticism” in Biblical studies yield hermeneutics.

Conceptual elucidation​ has really always been in the domain of philosophy. Since
ancient times, e.g., ​Plato’s dialogues​ and the texts of ​Aristotle​, the principle concern
was and still is the analysis of abstract concepts. In the early twentieth century, both
logic (​Bertrand Russell​) and the study of ordinary language use (​Ludwig
Wittgenstein​) would give additional weight to this methodology.

Lastly, the ​synoptic method​ is an attempt to look at the origin and development of an
idea or concept from various disciplinary perspectives.. The synoptic method is not
concerned with the truth or falsehood of an idea or concept, like conceptual elucidation,
but strictly how a given idea or concept emerged and evolved within various disciplines
to increase human knowledge.

What is historical research?

Understanding both the history of the discipline you are interested in and understanding
the cultural, political, and social era of the particular text you are studying depends on
reading and knowing history. History’s major activity is to gather evidence regarding the
past, evaluate that evidence within the temporal scope of the period under study, and
then access how that evidence contributes to our understanding of that period.

Historical research​ relies on a wide variety of sources, primary and secondary and oral
tradition.

Primary Sources​:

● Eyewitness accounts of events

● Oral or written testimony
● Found in public records or legal documents, minutes of meetings,
newspapers, diaries, letters, artifacts such as posters, billboards, photographs,
drawings, papers
● Located in ​university archives​ or ​special collections​, or local historical
society collections or privately owned collections

Secondary Sources:

Are scholarly interpretations and critiques of the historical period of interest that you are
studying. In the study of modern history the difference between primary and secondary
sources are usually clear. In ancient and medieval history this distinction is not so clear.

● Secondhand accounts of events

● Oral or written
● Found in textbooks, encyclopedias, journal articles, newspapers, biographies,
media such as ​film​ or tape recordings

Oral Tradition:

● Oral testimonies and personal narratives

Textual Criticism

What is it?

When we study a specific text, be that text a literary work, a philosophical treatise, or a
theological tract, the reader has various means of interpreting that particular work. It can
be viewed from a historical perspective, where the text is a response to previously
written texts or beliefs, e.g., ​Descartes’s ​Meditations​; a sociological perspective,
wherein the text is examined within the time frame when it was written, addressing the
social, economic, and political problems of that specific period.

Not only economic and political texts exemplify this, e.g., ​Karl Marx’s ​The Capital​ or
Machiavelli’s ​The Prince,​ but also many novels from the 18th Century to the present
address these issues. Look at the novels of ​Charles Dickens, Emil Zola,​ and a host of
other great works of literature. Examining a text from the standpoint of the author may
also reveal a psychological dimension whereby the author is revealing in the text both
conscious and unconscious fears and hopes through the characters.

A good example of this psychological perspective can be seen in the novels of ​Herman
Hesse​ or ​William Faulkner​.

The Question Remains....

The question remains in textual criticism regardless of any ideological perspective is;
exactly what is the author’s intention and why is this author addressing this
question or set of questions.

If we look at ​Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The ​Brothers Karamazov​, the novelist is clearly

giving an account of three brothers and their relationships within the context of a
patricide. Without any kind of analysis, one can readily see that the four brothers are
very different in character with regard to life’s outlook. Only after a first reading of the
novel, is the question of the author’s intention addressable by the reader.
Is Dostoevsky echoing a Russian Orthodox response to the ideas and notions of
the Enlightenment, or is his intention something else?

Conceptual Analysis

What is it?

This methodology goes back to the time of ​Plato​ and has been the major methodology
used by philosophers since then.

The basic idea is that questions like 'What is knowledge?', 'What is justice?', or 'What is
truth?' can be answered solely on the basis of one's grasp of the relevant concepts.

The​ primary reason​ for using conceptual analysis is to understand the meaning of an
idea or concept. The ​secondary reason​ is to determine how that idea or concept
relates to other philosophical problems. A good example of this is in ​Plato’s ​Republic​,
where he analyzes the concept of justice in context to the ideal state.

Although conceptual analysis is primarily used by philosophers with regard to abstract

ideas, this type of analysis is of great importance for all other academic disciplines. The
notion that a precise definition is first and foremost necessary in the analysis of any idea
or concept, before any investigation into its meaning and relationship to other ideas and
concepts, is what generates understanding and the expansion of knowledge for any
subject area. Understanding philosophical concepts is paramount to understanding
religion, the arts, and the natural and social sciences.

Synoptic Method

What is it?

This method started at the University of Chicago during the 1950s. It can be viewed as
a means of analyzing ideas within all academic disciplines by looking at the written texts
where these ideas are discussed and critiqued.
Why is this synoptic method important for the humanities?

It gives the researcher a means of understanding a polymathic approach to

contemporary issues and concerns. Understanding the origin and development of a
given concept or idea presents to the researcher a more thorough understanding of the
depth and extension to the contemporary issue or problem being addressed.

There is a historical evolution to all academic disciplines. The synoptic method looks at
ideas and concepts within this historical evolution for each of these academic disciplines
that takes them into account.

Best Practices for using synoptic method

Best practices for using the synoptic method is first to remember the cultural and
intellectual milieu in which the idea or concept under investigation emerged.

Then, always look at how this idea or concept you are investigating created various
ramifications to previous ideas and concepts.

Lastly, remember to use a polymathic approach in viewing the idea or concept under
investigation across various academic fields.

For example, do not be afraid to go from philosophy to theology, to political theory.

Using this methodology will give you the best means of not only obtaining a broader
understanding of the idea or concept under investigation, but will equally give you a
foundation for further doing research with regard to understanding the consequences
this idea or concept had within various perspectives.