It encompasses a wide range of fields - including history, philosophy, sociology, psychology, justice studies, evolutionary biology, biochemistry, neurosciences, folkloristics, and anthropology.
Its use of an empirical methodology that encompasses psychological experience in contrasts with the purely positivistic approach typical of the natural sciences which exceeds all methods not based solely on sensory observations.
'Science' may be appropriately used to refer to any branch of knowledge or study dealing with a body of facts or truths systematically arranged to show the operation of general laws.
Hume wished to establish a "science of human nature" based upon empirical phenomena, and excluding all that does not arise from observation.
Rejecting teleological, theological and metaphysical explanations, Hume sought to develop an essentially descriptive methodology; phenomena were to be precisely characterized.
He emphasized the necessity of carefully explicating the cognitive content of ideas and vocabulary, relating these to their empirical roots and real-world significance.
I Meanwhile, his conception of “Geisteswissenschaften” encompasses also the abovementioned study of classics, languages, literature, music, philosophy, history, religion, and the visual and performing arts.
86 Edmund Husserl, a student of Franz Brentano, articulated his phenomenological philosophy in a way that could be thought as a bthesis of Dilthey's attempt.
In particular, it addresses the ways in which self-reflection, art, music, poetry, drama, language and imagery reveal the human condition.
"[16] Since Auguste Comte, the positivistic social sciences have sought to imitate the approach of the natural sciences by emphasizing the importance of objective external observations and searching for universal laws whose operation is predicated on external initial conditions that do not take into account differences in subjective human perception and attitude.
Rejecting the positivist influence, they argue that the scientific method can rightly be applied to subjective, as well as objective, experience.