The Copts need more scholars in humanities and social sciences. We have enough in the natural sciences, formal sciences and applied sciences. Virtually, every university graduate now is a doctor or an engineer. While there is need for those in all societies, the need for scholars in humanities and social sciences is perhaps more needed, particularly for societies like ours that needs cultural renaissance in order to stand the pressure from the Muslims of Egypt.
The humanities discipline is the study of human society and culture, and includes such fields as history, linguistics and languages, law and politics, anthropology, philosophy, religion and archaeology. Social science, on the other hand, is the study of society and the relationships between the individuals in the society. One can see the link between humanities and social sciences; but there is more studied in a social science that is also important for the Copts such as education, as they try to revive their language, for example. The table above shows the different fields of the five academic disciplines.
Humanities and social sciences, particularly the former, use methods that are primarily critical or speculative. Much of that is history-related. For humanities and social sciences to prosper, they need a free milieu, and that is not sufficiently available under dictatorial, military rule. This perhaps accounts to the drop of the number of Copts who studied humanities and social sciences in universities inside Egypt since the Nasserist Coup of 1952. They may expose their scholars to danger. But even in free societies there is a feeling of some decline in the study of these two academic disciplines. In an article in the Independent newspaper, Nicholas Stern writes, emphasising the importance of humanities and social science:
Science, engineering and medicine are vital drivers of human progress and we must celebrate and nurture them. However, without the humanities and social sciences we can never find responses to the urgent issues that trouble us. The knowledge and expertise they add are the high-level analysis and insights essential to social and cultural well-being, to a rounded knowledge-driven economy. And ultimately to the UK’s contribution, place and reputation in the world. From history to psychology, economics to law, literature to philosophy and languages to archaeology, they alone help us understand what it means to be human, to make sense of our lives, and to understand the choices we make for it. And above all, how we interact.
What Stern says about the importance of humanities and social science for the UK can be said about their importance for the Copts. The Copts need them more, since what we have of them presently is trivial compared to the UK. If we want to revive and build our nation, revive our culture, and launch a renaissance with huge impact on the future we must pay more attention to these two essential disciplines.
Coptic boys and girls who enter universities, if they want to help their nation and Church, must think of this.