by Nicholas Cunigan. The past year has borne witness to deadly hurricanes, unseasonable temperatures, record flooding, and uncontrollable wildfires. The natural disasters that have wreaked havoc on Houston, Puerto Rico, and millions of acres in the West have left thousands of those directly affected homeless, destitute, and heartbroken. Many more are left looking for explanations. …
Continue reading Sins or Nature? Seventeenth and Twenty-First Century Responses to Climate Change
by Will Katerberg. The liberal arts and their fate are a central issue in higher education today. Pundits and politicians, and some parents, students, and graduates, are questioning the value of a university degree, some of them saying that students and taxpayers should not waste money on “useless” areas of study. Students seem to be …
Continue reading The Liberal Arts—Present, Past, and Future
by Will Katerberg. “Big Data” is all the rage today. We have data sets so large that current database management software can’t handle it. Think, for example, of medical records and demographic statistics and the need to identify trends and patterns in them. The study of history is going big these days too. We teach …
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by Will Katerberg. Everything has a history, but it’s easy not to notice. Partly that’s because we associate “history” with humanity, not the rest of the natural world. Partly it’s because some things seem timeless and unchanging, such as climate. Weather changes; climate does not seem to. A new book by John L. Brooke, a …
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Historical Horizons 