Humanities are academic disciplines that focus on aspects of culture and society. The Renaissance used the term to contrast with divinity. It referred to classicals which was the main area of secular university study at that time. The humanities today are defined as any field of study that is not related to professional training and mathematics.
The humanities employ methods that are primarily critical or speculative and have a significant historical component--as opposed to the mainly empirical approaches used by the natural sciences.
Humanities scholars are also known as humanists or humanists. humanist are Renaissance artists and scholars. Some secondary schools offer humanities classes that include literature and global Studies.
Folkloristics, history, and cultural anthropology are human disciplines that study subjects to which the manipulative experimental approach is not applicable. They instead use the comparative method as well as comparative research. Source criticism and hermeneutics are two other methods that are used in the humanities.