| Traditional Science Context | Nursing Human Science for Caring |
| Normative | Ipsative |
| Reductionistic | Transactional |
| Mechanistic | Metaphysical; Humanistic-contextual |
| Method centered | Phenomena centered |
| Disease centered on | Person-experience centered |
| Pathology-physiology, the physical body | Human responses to illness and personal meanings of human condition |
| Ethics of ‘science’ | Human-social ethics- morality |
| More quantitative | More qualitative |
| Absolutes, givens, laws | Relativism, probabilism |
| Human as object | Human as subject |
| Objective experiences | Subjective-intersubjective experiences |
| Facts | Experience, meaning |
| Nomothetic | Idiographic +/ nomethic |
| Concrete-observable | Abstract- may or may not “be seen” |
| Analytical | Dialectical, philosophical, metaphysical |
| Science as product | Science as creative process of discovery |
| Human = sum of parts ex.(bio-psycho-socio-culturalspiritual-being) | Human = mind/body/spirit gestalt of whole being (not only more than sum of parts, but different) |
| ‘Real’ is that which is measurable, observable, and knowable | ‘Real’ is abstract, largely subjective as well as objective, but is may or may not ever be fully known, observable, fully measured, what is ‘real’ holds mystery and unknowns yet to be discovered |