Abstract

LITANY, 1900-1964 The a twentieth-century invention, term has never had clear meaning. Morton Bloomfield says it was in 1920s that word came indicate disciplines like literature, art, languages, philosophy, and some extent history.' Several writers on what one called sudden dramatic revival of humanities after 1920 (these writers never point out when flourished before) impressed by absence of precise definition: cursory examination of subject, writes Ralph B. Perry in 1938, revealed fact that term 'humanities' had no fixed meaning.2 A 1940 study of The Revival of Humanities in American Education (New York: Columbia University Press) by Patricia Beesley notes the absence of fixed formulae in connection with term; humanities are not be easily catalogued by reference any one concept of humanism (p. 3, p. 64). The term, when it refers anything specific, usually applies various subjects, although some (see, for example, Greene, p. 153) point out that term does not or should not denote subjects. Though never developed fixed meaning, from beginning it has almost invariably been used within one persistent context, key word in a litany of four constant parts. First is relation scientific. The very perception of humanities is apparently possible only with respect scientific. Beesley attributes rise of term efforts to denote a field comparable in breadth Social Natural Sciences (p. 3). Bloomfield says the awareness of their distinctiveness was created by rise of behaviorism social sciences; they came into existence as a separate branch of learning defend them-