We live between what we can measure and what we must live through.
Introduction
Across universities, newspapers, and online essays, the question of the humanities continues to surface. Are they outdated in an age of data, or more necessary than ever? Alfie Robinson recently reflected on the divide between sciences and humanities, reminding us that the sciences have long been associated with scientia — knowledge — while the humanities emerged from studia humanitatis, the study of human experience.
The sciences often deal in precision and prediction, while the humanities lean into ambiguity and intention. Yet the arrival of artificial intelligence complicates this division. AI excels at knowledge tasks, but it can also serve as a partner for the humanities if used carefully.
This raises a simple question: in a world where machines handle so much of what we once did, what remains uniquely ours?
History shows that this tension is not new. Each age has faced moments when knowledge became easier to store and share — writing, printing, literacy, the internet — and each time, questions were raised about whether wisdom would survive the change. These earlier shifts remind us that disruption often unsettles at first, yet can also broaden the circle of access to wisdom. AI may be the latest such moment.
The Two Traditions
Knowledge tells us what is, wisdom asks why it matters.
At first glance, sciences and humanities appear as opposites — one precise, the other uncertain. Yet their origins reveal a more complementary relationship.
Some contrasts help clarify what each tradition contributes:
The sciences build clarity: They pursue measurable, testable truths, showing us how things work in the natural world.
The humanities embrace ambiguity: They study intention, culture, and meaning, where answers are rarely final or simple.
Together they balance extremes: Without science we lose rigour; without the humanities we lose orientation.
This balance points to a deeper truth: knowledge and wisdom may appear as poles, but they only reach their full value when held together. To see why, it helps to recognise the limits of knowledge itself.
Knowledge and Its Limits
Facts are stable, but they do not tell us how to live.
Knowledge, as Robinson notes, is about what can be known, measured, or graphed. It is enormously powerful — but limited in its scope.
Three aspects show its boundaries:
It is transferable: Knowledge can be stored, replicated, and distributed by books or machines.
It is partial: It explains the “what” and “how” but rarely the “why.”
It is perishable: Models change as assumptions shift, leaving once-stable knowledge obsolete.
Knowledge is indispensable, but by itself it risks being sterile. We need another layer to transform information into orientation. That layer is wisdom.
Wisdom and Its Work
Wisdom is less about answers than about living with questions.
Wisdom cannot be automated. It emerges from reflection, judgment, and the capacity to hold contradictions without dissolving them. The humanities cultivate this not through facts but through stories, histories, and arguments.
Some qualities highlight how wisdom differs:
It is embodied: Wisdom comes through lived experience, not abstract data.
It is relational: It grows in dialogue with others, across time and culture.
It is guiding: Wisdom does not tell us what is true, but how to live with truth.
This makes wisdom harder to measure, but also what most sustains us in moments of uncertainty. To understand how we reached this point, it helps to recall how earlier generations grappled with disruptive changes in the past.
Shifts Through the Ages
Every age finds new tools for storing knowledge, but wisdom is never stored — it must be lived.
Across history, new technologies have changed how humans hold and share knowledge. Each raised worries about what might be lost, yet each widened the circle of access.
Writing as external memory: Plato feared it would weaken recall, yet writing preserved his own dialogues and carried wisdom across centuries.
The printing press as multiplier: Critics worried about heresy and confusion, but printing made books available to many who had never seen them.
Mass literacy as cultural shift: Some thought ordinary people did not need books, yet literacy expanded citizenship, imagination, and reflection.
The internet as acceleration: It introduced distraction and misinformation, but also created new opportunities for learning and connection.
The anxiety is familiar. Spencer Klavan, writing in The Free Press, notes that worries about reading being replaced by quicker, easier alternatives are part of a longer story. The same pattern holds today with AI.
In every case, gatekeepers voiced concerns, but more people gained the chance to encounter wisdom — if they were receptive.
AI now continues this sequence. It heightens the tension by making knowledge feel instantaneous, yet it may also open doors for those who lacked time, training, or access. The question is not whether AI can make us wise, but whether it can help more people find their way toward wisdom if they are willing to engage.
This historical perspective sets the stage for thinking about AI not as an anomaly, but as the latest in a series of tools reshaping the relationship between knowledge and wisdom.
The Role of AI
Machines can help us think, but they cannot tell us how to live.
AI appears to sit squarely on the side of knowledge. It handles data, generates summaries, and solves defined problems at scale. Yet with the right use, it can also serve the humanities as a tool for cultivating wisdom.
Ways AI can play this role include:
As a counterpoint: When prompted to argue both sides of a question, it expands our field of vision.
As a mirror: By surfacing hidden assumptions or intentions, it forces us to reflect more critically.
As a rehearsal partner: By presenting multiple perspectives, it strengthens our capacity for empathy and judgment.
AI cannot embody wisdom, but it can help us exercise the very skills that humanities education values most. This is why the humanities remain as vital as ever.
Why the Humanities Still Matter
We do not only need to know what happens; we need to know why it matters.
The humanities remain vital because they ask the questions science cannot conclude. Politics, history, religion, and art resist mechanistic models not because they are irrational but because they are profoundly human.
The reasons are simple:
They anchor meaning: Without the humanities, knowledge risks becoming detached from human purpose.
They cultivate resilience: Engaging with ambiguity prepares us for complexity and conflict.
They train discernment: By analysing intentions and biases, they make us more capable citizens.
AI’s arrival does not weaken this case. It strengthens it, by making clear where human judgment is irreplaceable. Which brings us back to how the sciences and humanities can and must be held together.
Holding Them Together
The task is not to choose between sciences and humanities, but to connect them.
Rather than treating knowledge and wisdom as enemies, we can see them as companions. The sciences expand what we know. The humanities remind us why it matters. AI, when used carefully, can bridge these realms by amplifying both.
The challenge, then, is not to decide which discipline to value, but to hold them together in balance — knowledge without wisdom is empty; wisdom without knowledge is blind. This leads us back to the larger question: what kind of culture do we want to sustain?
Conclusion
The old division between sciences and humanities is sharpened, not erased, by the arrival of AI. Machines take on more of the work of knowledge, which places greater weight on human beings to pursue wisdom.
If earlier disruptions widened access to wisdom — to readers who had never held books, or to citizens who had never been taught to read — then perhaps AI carries the same potential. It cannot make us wise, but it may allow more people to approach wisdom who would otherwise be excluded by barriers of time, education, or opportunity. The responsibility rests not in the tool itself, but in how we choose to use it.
Perhaps the question is not whether we need the humanities, but whether we can still recognise the need for them. For in the end, what makes us human is not only what we know, but how we choose to live with what we know.
We will not be measured by what we know, but by what we do with it.