Human Sciences, Sport Sciences, and the Need to Study People “In the Round”

Abstract

The current orthodoxy regarding science within sport science is rethought so as to enable the social sciences to enter the field and allow for a debate over the nature and purpose of the sport sciences. An alternative vision of the potential of the sport sciences is proposed: A more “scientific” picture of human beings may be produced if human beings are studied “in the round,” capturing them as whole selves, not as isolated physiological or psychological units. If a multidisciplinary synthesis were adopted, the subject, via its component disciplines, would provide a model for the reintegration of disciplines in the urgent need to study people in human-development and not performance-efficiency terms.