The Importance of Critical Thinking in the Humanities

When I was in the sciences, NSF asks, these days, regularly, when you submit a grant proposal, what is going to be the broader impact of your research? And we usually come up with some kind of baller play thing like, well, you know, basic science often leads to applications of some sort or another. But in fact, historically speaking, basic science very rarely has led to those applications. We probably shouldn't neglect to mention that there are a lot of very useful scientific discoveries that have been made possible by research which did not have any obvious, immediate, direct benefits. That's harder to back up in practice than one might think.