In this session, philosopher and social scientist Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm explores the growing crisis facing the humanities — from declining enrolments and collapsing public confidence to the deeper legitimation crisis at the heart of modern academic disciplines. He traces how fields like history, sociology, anthropology, and literature were originally formed, how their core categories later came under critique, and why the fragmentation of knowledge has left the human sciences struggling to explain their value.
Storm traces how fields such as history, sociology, anthropology, and literary studies were originally formed in the 19th century, and how the core categories that structured these disciplines — concepts like art, religion, culture, and society — later came under sustained philosophical and historical critique. Over time, this has contributed to fragmentation, hyper-specialisation, and a weakening of the shared mission that once guided the human sciences.
Yet Storm argues that this moment of crisis also presents an opportunity. By moving beyond outdated disciplinary silos, rethinking knowledge through humble, provisional inquiry, and shifting from substance ontology to process ontology, he sketches the possibility of a renewed intellectual project: the reintegration of the human sciences.
The discussion also explores how metatheory might help rebuild shared intellectual infrastructure across fragmented fields and support new forms of interdisciplinary inquiry.
Timestamps
00:00:00 – Introduction To Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm
00:01:57 – Framing The Crisis In The Humanities
00:05:24 – The Data: Declining Degrees And Falling Confidence In Higher Education
00:09:25 – The Humanities As A Legitimation Crisis
00:10:54 – The 19th-Century Origins Of The Human Sciences
00:14:28 – The Original Mission Of Disciplines Like History And Literature
00:21:55 – Critiques Of Key Categories: Art, Religion, Culture, And Society
00:29:36 – Epistemological Crisis And Disciplinary Fragmentation
00:35:16 – Crisis As An Opportunity For Reconstruction
00:42:05 – Metatheory And The Reintegration Of The Human Sciences
