ABSTRACT

Naturalism is a central issue in philosophy, and has been for the longest time, albeit with widely different construals, linked to widely different contexts. The human sciences have been at the forefront of the naturalism debate. In fact, the human sciences are becoming stronger and more relevant to social, economic, political issues, and naturalism has a lot to do with it. But there is an equally important target for the naturalist's critical proclivity, that is, naturalism itself. However, equally confirmed by quotidian experience is the recurrence of situations in which the problem is humanly intractable, in the precise sense where there is no known tractable algorithmic procedure that determines the relevant features. The human sciences thus comprise an essential idiothetic, descriptive component that is connected, but only partially, to the network of regularities and constraints brought to light by their naturalistic subdisciplines.