“Wicked Problems”: Humanities advocacy’s need for History of Humanities
November 2023
| Journal article
| History of Humanities
Advocates for the humanities have ongoing need of good work in the history of
humanities as they canvas evidence of how the field has, in the past, sought to describe its
contributions to knowledge and articulate the importance of its distinctive concentration on
the objects, media, and value of culture. Apprehending better which arguments have been
persuasive contextually and which have fared less well can help to sharpen defences for the
future and avoid errors of description (not least those that arise from blinkered perspectives
on whose culture and whose history are worth attending to). This forum contribution
considers the need to take a wide view of which disciplinary histories will be relevant—
reinforcing the Introduction’s observation that history of the humanities continues to
develop in close connection with history of knowledge, construed more generally. In recent
years numerous advocates have advanced claims that humanities disciplines are well
equipped (even uniquely equipped) to handle “wicked problems”—intractably complex
problems germane to the future flourishing of our societies and the planet. Returning to the
origins of the “wicked problems” concept within late 1960s urban planning, and subsequent
disputes within the social sciences over its validity, I argue that deploying it persuasively on
behalf of the humanities will require careful attention to a history which has left it with
uneven traction in other disciplines.
FFR, interdisciplinarity, history of science, wicked problems, humanties advocacy