After reading Professor Robb’s On Definitions, I understand that it is not easy to give definition for any term. Especially for vague terms like revolution and the humanities the Humanities. However, I will conclude my working definitions from perspectives of different units of our humes course to be not too subjective.
From the first unit we understand that revolution is always happening, the revolution of races, the revolution of different political systems, and the revolution of gender identities. Together such revolutions can be seen as the revolution of humanities. I understand the fact of combining two words that need to be explained will only make things more complicated, but this is what I personally think how these terms work. In the second unit, the term that impressed me the most is “paradigm shift”. The changes of paradigms in different field, like astronomy, translation, and even bullsh*t, are representations of revolution. These first two units interpret revolution and humanities in two most general aspects: social science and natural science (social philosophy and natural philosophy may be a better fit since we are talking about the “humanities” aspect, but anyway). Professor Quillen presented a very good start of the course by linking the social/humane part of revolution and humanities with many deep questions, like discriminations against races (which actually echo with some unit 4 stuff). While professor Robb showed us the topic that I used to think will never appears in humanities—natural sciences.
The next two units are sort of sad and hard for me. Sad for the third unit because I was so shocked about the genocide happened in Rwanda just twenty-five years ago. I never hear anyone talking about it before I read the book, and when I talked to my family back in China, they told me they don’t even know where Rwanda is. This is yet another difference for different people in different countries around the world. The fourth unit is a little bit hard because I am not very into religion, but I could understand the revolution of black people in civil rights movement. I will say the latter two units further explain the definitions of these terms, making them more complete more descriptively and prescriptively.
