Why Man is Prior to Science in any Science of Man

Abstract

Harold G. Coward and Joseph R. Royce, in their original¹ contribution to this volume (pp. 109–134) entitled “Toward an Epistemological Basis for Humanistic Psychology,” discuss the difference between traditional empirical twentieth-century psychology and the newly developing humanistic psychology in terms of the distinction Martin Buber makes between “I-It” and “I-Thou.” They observe correctly that for some two centuries the empirical questions of natural science have provided the dominant framework for Western thought in general and the specific development of psychology as well. This rigid empirical viewpoint has given us a one-dimensional concept of man, and because of this we have largely lost any vision of man as a total being, dividing him, intellectually, into various systems, stimuli, and responses.