 To this point we have mainly focused on what it takes to understand phenomena in the natural world, such as rusting metal bars, or the rising and falling of the tides, or the behavior of gases. A longstanding question, however, especially in the Continental tradition of philosophy and especially in the philosophy of the social sciences, is whether understanding human beings and their artifacts requires something different and distinctive from an epistemic point of view—perhaps, for example, a distinctive set of abilities or methodologies, tied to the distinctive objects (or, importantly, subjects!) we are trying to understand.