"All science is experiential; but all experience must be related back to and derives its its validity from the conditions and context of consciousness in which it arises, i.e., the totality of our nature"
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Dilthey is trying to keep science honest about its own origin story: it can’t pretend to float above human life while quietly feeding on it. “All science is experiential” sounds like a concession to empiricism, but the second clause tightens the screws. Experience isn’t raw data waiting to be processed; it only becomes meaningful within “the conditions and context of consciousness” that make it legible in the first place. He’s pushing back against the 19th-century temptation to treat scientific method as a neutral machine that produces truth independent of the knower.
The subtext is a jurisdictional dispute. Dilthey, a historian steeped in the mess of motives, meanings, and institutions, is defending the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) against the prestige of the natural sciences. If physics gets to define knowledge as measurement, history and interpretation look like second-class citizens. Dilthey flips the hierarchy: even physics depends on a human world of attention, categories, language, and shared forms of life. “Validity” doesn’t just arrive from verification; it’s anchored in the larger “totality of our nature” - embodied, social, historical, value-laden.
Context matters here: late-19th-century Germany is the high age of positivism and methodological confidence, but also of anxiety about reductionism. Dilthey’s move is strategic. He’s not rejecting science; he’s widening its foundation. The line is a reminder that the most rigorous knowledge still carries fingerprints: not as contamination, but as the condition that makes knowledge possible at all.
The subtext is a jurisdictional dispute. Dilthey, a historian steeped in the mess of motives, meanings, and institutions, is defending the human sciences (Geisteswissenschaften) against the prestige of the natural sciences. If physics gets to define knowledge as measurement, history and interpretation look like second-class citizens. Dilthey flips the hierarchy: even physics depends on a human world of attention, categories, language, and shared forms of life. “Validity” doesn’t just arrive from verification; it’s anchored in the larger “totality of our nature” - embodied, social, historical, value-laden.
Context matters here: late-19th-century Germany is the high age of positivism and methodological confidence, but also of anxiety about reductionism. Dilthey’s move is strategic. He’s not rejecting science; he’s widening its foundation. The line is a reminder that the most rigorous knowledge still carries fingerprints: not as contamination, but as the condition that makes knowledge possible at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Truth |
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