The humanities remain essential to any genuine education not because they directly address the question of the being of the world (this is the work of science), but because they are faithful to the question of what is other that "what is."  Religion, art, fiction, music, film, theater, poetry, etc., are all essential because they protest the vanity of the world and aim to induce the birth of the new.

Adam S. Miller, Rube Goldberg Machines, pg. 110