Wilhelm Dilthey

However, the sciences of society and of history retained their old subservient relation to metaphysics for a long time - well into the eighteenth century.

A knowledge of the forces that rule society, of the causes that have produced its upheavals, and of society's resources for promoting healthy progress has become of vital concern to our civilization.

The existence of inherent limits of experience in no way settles the question about the subordination of facts of the human world to our knowledge of matter.

Thus, in accordance with the spirit of the Historical School, knowledge of the principles of the human world falls within that world itself, and the human sciences form an independent system.

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.