Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society
and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and
referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in
universities at the time. Today, the humanities are more frequently defined as
any fields of study outside of natural sciences, social sciences, formal
sciences (like mathematics) and applied sciences (or professional training).
They use methods that are primarily critical, or speculative, and have a
significant historical element—as distinguished from the mainly empirical
approaches of the natural sciences; yet, unlike the sciences, there is no
general history of humanities as a distinct discipline in its own right.