I think a totally whole human being should know something about art, literature and mathematics. Does that mean that any field of study that doesn't include mathematics is deficient? No, it means that any person who doesn't cover more than one field of study, even cursorily, is deficient. Any piece of human knowledge can only be understood in the context of every other piece of human knowledge... but it's fine for a field of study to have a limited context, if for no other purpose than to make it easier for librarians to organize books associated with it.