A Diversity of Divisions: Tracing the History of the Demarcation between the Sciences and the Humanities (2015)
Bouterse, Jeroen (Author)
Karstens, Bart (Author)
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 106, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 341-352
Edition Details: Part of a Series: The History of Humanities and the History of Science
Language: English
Throughout history, divides between the sciences and the humanities have been drawn in many different ways. This essay shows that the notion of a divide became more urgent and pronounced in the second half of the nineteenth century. While this shift has several causes, the essay focuses on the rise of the social sciences, which is interpreted as posing a profound challenge to the established disciplines of the study of humankind. This is demonstrated by zooming in on linguistics, one of the key traditional disciplines of the humanities. Through the assumption of a correspondence between mental and linguistic categories, psychology became of central importance in the various conceptions of linguistics that emerged in the nineteenth century. Both linguistics and psychology were very much engaged in a process of discipline formation, and opinions about the proper directions of the fields varied considerably. Debates on these issues catalyzed the construction of more radical divisions between the sciences and the humanities. Both Wilhelm Dilthey's dichotomy between understanding and explanation and Wilhelm Windelband's dichotomy between nomothetic and idiographic sciences respond to these debates. While their constructions are often lumped together, the essay shows that they actually meant very different things and have to be treated accordingly.
...MoreArticle Bod, Rens; Kursell, Julia (2015) Introduction: The Humanities and the Sciences. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 337-340).
Similar Citations
Article
Guillaume Fréchette;
(2020)
Descriptive Psychology: Brentano and Dilthey
(/isis/citation/CBB957672505/)
Article
Kumazaki, Tsutomu;
(2013)
The Theoretical Root of Karl Jaspers' General Psychopathology. Part 1: Reconsidering the Influence of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics
(/isis/citation/CBB001320331/)
Article
Kaplan, Judith R. H.;
(2015)
Avestan Studies in Imperial Germany: Sciences of Text and Sound
(/isis/citation/CBB001551403/)
Book
Saunders, Barbara;
(2007)
The Debate about Colour Naming in 19th-Century German Philology
(/isis/citation/CBB000850388/)
Book
Pugach, Sara Elizabeth Berg;
(2012)
Africa in Translation: A History of Colonial Linguistics in Germany and Beyond, 1814--1945
(/isis/citation/CBB001212521/)
Thesis
Kaplan, Judith R. H.;
(2012)
Language Science and Orientalism in Imperial Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001560884/)
Thesis
Pourciau, Sarah M.;
(2007)
Explications: Etymology as Language Science, 1822--1941
(/isis/citation/CBB001560819/)
Chapter
Burchardt, Lothar;
(2005)
The School of Oriental Languages at the University of Berlin---Forging the Cadres of German Imperialism?
(/isis/citation/CBB000774971/)
Article
Paul Eling;
Stanley Finger;
(2020)
Gall’s German Enemies
(/isis/citation/CBB509621042/)
Article
Edwards, Laura Hyatt;
(2013)
A Brief Conceptual History of Einfühlung: 18th-Century Germany to Post-World War II U.S. Psychology
(/isis/citation/CBB001213767/)
Article
Katherina Kinzel;
(2017)
Wilhelm Windelband and the Problem of Relativism
(/isis/citation/CBB605899861/)
Article
Christian Damböck;
(2020)
What Is Descriptive Psychology? Ebbinghaus’s 1896 Criticism of Dilthey Revisited
(/isis/citation/CBB745855190/)
Thesis
Andrew Jeffrey Spadafora;
(2013)
Freedom from Value Judgments: Value-Free Social Science and Objectivity in Germany, 1880-1914
(/isis/citation/CBB794694675/)
Thesis
Luke Anthony McMullan;
(2021)
The Rise of Philology in Britain: Explaining the Progress of Knowledge, 1750–1859
(/isis/citation/CBB120032710/)
Article
Scott Edgar;
(2020)
Völkerpsychologie and the Origins of Hermann Cohen’s Antipsychologism
(/isis/citation/CBB538329847/)
Article
Maehle, Andreas-Holger;
(2000)
Assault and Battery, or Legitimate Treatment? German Legal Debates on the Status of Medical Interventions without Consent, c. 1890-1914
(/isis/citation/CBB000111790/)
Article
Lembeck, Karl-Heinz;
(1996)
Kantianismus oder Neukantianismus in Diltheys Psychologie?
(/isis/citation/CBB000072074/)
Article
Lessing, Hans-Ulrich;
(1985)
Briefe an Dilthey anlässlich der Veröffentlichung seiner Ideen über eine beschreibende und zergliedernde Psychologie
(/isis/citation/CBB000053014/)
Article
(1994/95)
Diltheys Psychologie
(/isis/citation/CBB000054675/)
Article
Riccardo Martinelli;
(2018)
Defining Human Sciences: Theodor Waitz’s Influence on Dilthey
(/isis/citation/CBB800260217/)
Be the first to comment!