Blackwell Reference Online

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P hilosophy of history, philosophy of social science [German, human sciences or human studies, but including social sciences as well as humanities] A term particularly associated with Wilhelm Dilthey and contrasted to Naturwissenschaften [German, natural sciences]. Natural sciences offer objective knowledge and can explain phenomena in terms of laws, but these features are lacking in the humanities. Hermeneutics , according to Dilthey, can defend the human sciences as an integrated body of disciplines with their own methods and principles in contrast to those of the natural sciences. Their dependence upon the cognitive capacity of understanding gives them a distinct status as a source of knowledge . The human sciences possess a peculiar relation to human experience . Rather than establishing laws to explain events, they describe historical facts and formulate standards of value and practical imperatives. Some philosophers propose hermeneutics as the methodology that is appropriate to provide objectivity for humanities. This claimed objectivity is challenged by those who wish to free interpretation from the need to have an objective end-point and by the positivist claim that human knowledge must meet the standards for a unified science that are essentially set by the natural sciences. “All the disciplines that have socio-historical reality as their subject-matter ... log in or subscribe to read full text