“Every pianist needs to take a piano apart to understand how it works,” he offered as an example.

Whereas science education connects students to a “need to know” by presenting a problem and teaching students the method with which to solve it, Botstein said the humanities must do the same by providing a framework for students to pursue their curiosity about “where we live in the world, the world we live in, the history and the memory.”

Botstein also said humanities education should be active rather than passive, drawing another correlation with the sciences where students perform experiments in the lab or build machines to solve problems.

A student in a literature course should be required to write literature, he said, while a student in an art course should create art, and those creations should be shared publicly.

Discussions on the ongoing role of the humanities in higher education will continue through Saturday at the Sheldon, Love Library and other locations on campus.

During his opening remarks, Francisco said a political and social climate that views the humanities as irrelevant to America’s economic and cultural vitality raises two key questions.