Normativity is the key to the difference between the human and the natural sciences

Wolfgang Spohn

pp. 241-251

in: Dennis Dieks, Stephan Hartmann, Thomas Uebel, Marcel Weber, Wenceslao J. Gonzalez (eds), Explanation, prediction, and confirmation, Berlin, Springer, 2011

Abstract

In this paper I take the human sciences to comprise psychology, social, economic, and political sciences, archaeology, history, ethnology, linguistics, philologies, literary and cultural studies, and similar fields having emerged besides and in between. So, the human sciences study the individual and collective ways and products of the human mind. After the term "Geisteswissenschaften" has narrowed its meaning, the term "Humanwissenschaften", "human sciences", seems more appropriate. By contrast, the natural sciences are to comprise all the other fields of empirical study, physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology, geology, engineering, etc. In this paper I would like to give an update of, and a fresh attempt at, the longstanding heated issue whether or not there is a principled difference between the human and the natural sciences.