I WAS quite shocked to learn recently that in some universities, the discipline of history is actually considered as part of the humanities and not as a social science. I thought that this debate was already settled, having come from the University of the Philippines. In 1983, the UP College of Arts and Sciences was divided into three separate colleges: the College of Arts and Letters, the College of Science, and the College of Social Sciences and Philosophy. Although it can be said that writing history is part of literature and therefore should be in Arts and Letters, it was placed in Social Sciences and Philosophy along with Anthropology, Linguistics, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Geography and, of course, Philosophy.
Why is the distinction important between treating history as humanities or making it part of the social sciences? Why does it matter?
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