ABSTRACT
Debates over the relative merits of various disciplines within the university curriculum and the benefits they confer upon society are not particularly new. In the current educational context the setting of national priorities and research agendas tends to pivot on which sub-disciplines within the applied sciences are likely to be recipients of government largesse. It is taken for granted that the natural sciences have many and varied socio-economic objectives and that they make a major contribution to the material welfare of society. The disciplines of the humanities, by way of contrast, are regarded as contributing, if at all, in vague and unspecific ways to our cultural resources. The notion that study ought to contribute to the moral formation of the individual and that the primary function of education is to produce well-rounded individual citizens, capable of steering society towards common social and religious goals, is now regarded as at best quaint, at worst, sinister. The study of things, rather than the study of words, has become the main priority, and it is taken for granted that it is the former that confers tangible social benefits in a way that the latter seemingly cannot.
