Centrifugal trends seem to dominate the present scene in academic/ scientific/theoretical psychology, and much "post-modern" criticism would even give up the empirical enterprise aimed at cumulative understanding. I argue for a conception of "human science" that joins the interpretive and explanatory traditions and, as a central, active component of personality, developmental and social psychology, undergirds professional applications and seems unlikely to be supplanted by neuroscience or cognitive science. It ought to be distinguished from the legitimate humanistic enterprise (Geisteswissenschaft) that meets other criteria than those of natural science.
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