In the field of academic research, the new liberal arts is the word of one family, and it is an exploration to turn it into a general promotion project. On the one hand, new liberal arts is a concept put forward by Hiram college in order to combine new technology with old liberal arts, but it does not take the lead in the professional quality and level of American liberal arts. "New liberal arts" is not necessarily "excellent liberal arts" or "good liberal arts", but a liberal arts with more tools and means. The use of such tools is limited by various conditions and has a vulnerability that is difficult to overcome in the short term. Its effectiveness may not be higher than that of professionals who do not use these tools.

More importantly, whether a tool is used well depends on whether the user has ideas. If there is, a good tool is like adding wings to a tiger. On the contrary, the best tool is only a decoration after all. From this perspective, we should not overestimate the role of "tools".

On the other hand, discipline is only a phased part of human understanding of the world. In the complex and long process of human understanding of the world, it has only a history of hundreds of years from erudite Scripture form to branch research. Division of subjects is only a phased paradigm for human beings to understand the world. After division, the emergence of interdisciplinary and other forms just shows the limitations of division research. Not all knowledge can be included in the discipline for research, and many advanced theories and technologies such as chip technology are difficult to be included. In the future, more non academic scientific research will be generated according to the actual needs.

Divisional research can only be applied to those research fields with clear object content boundary, strong standardization and systematicness. Since the discipline is phased and limited, the pursuit of a new academic realm does not need to add labels such as old and new in front of the discipline, but should pursue a new academic paradigm constructed according to the complex characteristics of the research object. For example, the research of chip needs to adopt the integration mode according to its mechanism, and can no longer be limited to disciplines. Education, which involves the research of life system and humanistic system, also needs integration and can not be limited to liberal arts. Even if "new liberal arts" is added, it may not be able to solve many problems.

Integration is a new research method. It is a process of dissolving the knowledge related to the problem to be solved into a compatible knowledge element and forming a new cognitive unit. It no longer follows the Discipline Paradigm of interdisciplinary and marginal disciplines, nor does it cross, integrate and penetrate between different disciplines, but dispels the discipline consciousness, barriers and boundaries, Decode the knowledge of each discipline into information elements that can be flexibly selected and organized, and select the knowledge elements related to the studied problems, carry out new and high-density fine combination guided by problem solving, and form a cognitive unit with strong structure and function in an integrated way, so as to understand problems more deeply and effectively, solve problems and achieve the goals set by researchers.

Integration is more convenient for knowledge production and makes it more flexible and efficient to meet practical needs. Compared with the research of discipline paradigm, integrated research can provide more diversified theoretical basis and perspectives, and is more prone to theoretical breakthrough and technological innovation, as well as knowledge proliferation and application efficiency. Moreover, the more complex, cutting-edge and cutting-edge research fields are, the more it is necessary to break through the limitations of discipline research, use integrated thinking and methods to solve problems and cultivate talents.

At present, various expositions on the "new liberal arts" have made a lot of ornaments on the hat of "new", but it seems that the shoe of "liberal arts" is still "old". Its basic facts and logic have not changed much, and only a few people talk about using it to solve new problems. The "new liberal arts" explained by most people has high semantic overlap, which is to use the "new bottle" of new technologies such as big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence to fill the "old wine" of the old liberal arts and expect the intersection of Arts and science. Among the more than 1000 projects approved in this application, the structure of project names shows such characteristics. Shandong Province, a big old liberal arts family, has the largest number of projects approved, which also confirms this judgment.

The development and application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence to various fields is a natural process, including the application of liberal arts. Whether from the standpoint of liberal arts or from the standpoint of new technology, there are internal driving forces for mutual combination and cooperation. It is difficult to determine whether the government needs to use financial funds to support on a large scale, or whether this support is naturally necessary. It is necessary to squeeze out the possible water by establishing an objective third-party evaluation in the construction of new liberal arts.

Compared with the "new" of form, the construction of liberal arts needs the "thought" of connotation. For thousands of years, whether the liberal arts is old or new, the key depends on whether there is thought, as well as the profundity, breadth and logic of thought. The works of many great masters of liberal arts thought in history will not be outdated, but they are obviously "old liberal arts" in the vision of new liberal arts. Thought is the lubricant to solve problems and the more valuable core of liberal arts. The pursuit of the old and new values of liberal arts is obviously not as good as the pursuit of high quality of liberal arts. They have ideas, can think and can think.

In fact, the "new liberal arts" is, to some extent, an accommodation to the existing university entities. Universities and research institutions set up according to disciplines do not arrange seats and funding supply channels for non disciplinary research. In order to survive and develop the existing liberal arts, we need to put on a new name, obtain new projects, select new teams and invest more funds. This demand is reasonable, but whether it can make the research in the field of liberal arts really "new" remains to be tested in practice. If several years later, the new liberal arts project only leaves a lot of applications, research reports and certificates with various names, which can not or do not solve many problems urgently needed to be solved in social development, and there are not many valuable liberal arts academic products, it may sit down to the conjecture that the new liberal arts is only formal chemistry.

In short, the research objects now included in the field of liberal arts are extremely complex and diverse, the research paradigm is not unique, there are many possibilities and differences in the development trend, there is no only "way to go", there is no need to build many systems, and it is not suitable to invest a lot of money to guide the liberal arts of colleges and universities across the country to a single research mode and path in a project driven manner. The high-quality development in this field requires high-quality and thoughtful scholars to explore a variety of ways with an open attitude and in a unique way. Some of them may go beyond disciplines to integration. Perhaps this is a more feasible way to promote real innovation in the field of liberal arts and better meet the needs of people's happiness.