The context against which this paper has been written is one of largescale dis-investment in the humanities in higher education which is provoking what has been described as 'a crisis for the humanities'. Such disinvestment is evident in the new research strategy developed by the European Commission as in the UK government's decision not to provide any government funding for the humanities in English universities, but also in the policies adopted by Asian and African governments to adopt a 70/30 distribution of places in higher education (with 70% for science and technology). Such policies sit comfortbly with other tendencies to exalt what science can contribute to human understanding at the expense of the humanities.

This paper seeks, then, to examine critically the claims for the 'scientific' study of 'mankind' and to consider what sort of case can be made for the distinctive and essentail contribution of the humanities to such understanding.. This paper proposes that while such scientific study of human beings might reveal all sorts of interesting things about them, ‘the proper study of mankind’ requires a different intellectual and imaginative apparatus rooted in the humanities and the more humanistic end of the social sciences.

This argument is developed via William James (often regarded as one of the founding figures of modern scientific psychology and especially educational psychology) and via Isaiah Berlin to the early 18^th century philosopher. Giambattista Vico. whose reaction to Enlightenment science and mathematics led him to articulate a vision of a scienza nuova, or new science, essentially rooted in the humanities. Berlin’s and Vico’s work is joined in this paper to Winch’s advocacy of the centrality of philosophy to an understanding of human and social being. The result is to put a new emphasis on human self-consciousness and intentionality, on imagination or fantasia, on moral responsibility and self questioning, on human experiencing of the natural and social world and human understanding of the rules which they live by – as well as the cultural and historical framing of all these. In so far as these things are what constitute our humanity and in so far as these provide the very stuff of the subjects we roughly group together as the humanities, then this provides a case for valuing the contribution of the humanities to ‘the proper study of mankind’ above the scientific pretensions of eg psychology.

Berlin,I. (1976). Vico and Herder: Two studies in the history of ideas. London; Hogarth Press. Berlin, I. (1997). The proper study of mankind: An anthology of essays. Edited by H.Hardy & R.Hausheer with a foreword by R.Annan and and introduction by R,Hausheer. London: Chatto and Windus. Vico, G.B. (1709/ 1965). On the study methods of our time [De nostril temporis studiorum ratione], translated and introduced by E. Gianturco. New York: Bobbs-Merril. Vico, G.B. (1707/1993). On humanistic education: Six Inaugural Orations 1699-1707, translated by G.A.Piriton & A.W.Shipper with Introduction by D.P. Verene. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Vico,G.B. (1725/2002). Vico: The first new science [Scienza Nuova]translated by L. Pompa. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winch, P. (1958). The idea of a social science and its relation to philosophy. London: Rooutledge and Kegan Paul Winch, P. (1964). Understanding a primitive society. American Philosophical Quarterly, 1:4, 307-324.