Human sciences, sports sciences and the need to study people 'in the round'

In this paper, a version of which was written originally in 1991, I contended that the received wisdom in both science and sport, exercise and health sciences, with regard to the nature of scientific enquiry and of the potential of the subject area, arguably hampers further advances toward a more embracing study of sports people `in the round'. The ideal typical model of the sciences, derived from physics, is inappropriate to many natural and social science disciplines. This model does not by any means exhaust the possibilities of what `science'involves.I rejected the idea that there is only one universal logic of scientific method that distinguishes, in some clear cut, absolute sense, science from non-science. I also argued for a shift away from performance-efficiency and narrow based notions of health models of the subject to a more human-development model that could have a more humane and democratic impact on people's lives. With changes in the subject area over the past decade that case still needs to be made.