Abstract

It is argued that Nuyen's objectivist perspective on the method of the natural sciences is misleading, failing to capture its primary feature: maintaining a separation between two levels--a level takes as observations and data and a level taken as conceptually integrated theory--and at the same time working between these two levels in a manner that draws them together. Appropriately articulated this feature gives a perspective that (i) sees in the natural sciences an essential relation between knower and known similar to that attributed by Nuyen to the human sciences; and (ii) specifies the function of generalization in the natural sciences in a manner that specifies crucial questions challenging Nuyen's contrast of the natural and human sciences.