Understanding versus explanation
The proposal to balance the rise of the natural science grounding of medical care with an increased focus on the individual or person mirrors some of the psychiatrist Karl Jaspers’ aims a century ago. At the turn of the century in Germany, psychiatry was dominated by academic neuroscientists working under the assumption, epitomised by the Jaspers’ fellow psychiatrist Wilhelm Griesinger’s famous aphorism, that ‘Mental illnesses are brain illnesses’.
Jaspers’ response was to stress the role of understanding in addition to explanation in psychiatry. This reflected the debate, called the Methodenstreit, about the correct methods for psychology in the late nineteenth century. Should the human sciences (the Geisteswissenschaften) attempt to copy the methods of the natural sciences (Naturwissenschaften), or should they follow a distinct method or methods?
This session examines the distinction between understanding and explanation. Is it still of relevance? And how does understanding someone differ from a natural scientific explanation?
Reading
Winch, P. (1988) The Idea of a Social Science and its Relation to Philosophy, London: Routledge chapter 3