I know this was a week ago you wrote this but I only today came across this essay by Georg Henrik von Wright called "Humanism and the Humanities" that I think i

I know this was a week ago you wrote this but I only today came across this essay by Georg Henrik von Wright called "Humanism and the Humanities" that I think is apt. In §13 he says (and I'm going to quote the thing in full), <blockquote>I shall now advance a thesis which I am sure many will find controversial but which I think is true and, moreover, crucial for understanding the methodological status of the humanities and the relation of the humanities to the sciences of nature. The thesis goes as follows: Just as natural, i.e. non-intentional phenomena are 'governed' by natural laws, i.e. principles which tell us either what will invariably or in statistical average be the case under in principle recurrent and repeatable circumstances, in an analogous manner intentional phenomena are 'governed' by normative rules which tell us what people under given circumstances are (or were) expected or allowed or practically necessitated to do. I am, in other words, pleading for what might be called a 'methodological parallelism' between natural laws on the one hand and laws and other societal rules on the other hand. I am inviting you to see the difference between the humanities and the natural sciences in the light of the difference between the factual and the normative, between rules which state how things in fact go and rules which ordain how they should go according to the conceptions of those who instituted the rules.</blockquote> Make of that what you will :)