Science has to do with knowing and that which is known. Philosophers of science are concerned with valid ways of knowing and ways of validating that which is known. Human science is described by scholars in various ways, each emphasizing particular values but all connecting to a common understanding that human science is concerned with knowing the world of human experience. A committed inquiry into human experience seems to call forth certain values related to the meaning of being human. Herein lies the fundamental difference between formal science and human science, as we perceive it. Formal science, that which is practiced in the natural sciences and other sciences that emulate them, is modeled on the structure of mathematics. Mathematics is a highly lawful science that has contributed enormous social benefits over time. However, formal science grounded in mathematics and languaged as calculus is an inappropriate approach to the study of person-as-person. A perspective that addresses the phenomenon of person-as-person is grounded in central values such as caring, freedom, and creativity. Methods to study person must be similarly grounded. We have come to understand that valid ways of knowing nursing and legitimate warrants for nursing knowledge are discovered from within the study of nursing itself; that is, within the study of the nursing situation. The manner in which certain disciplines are conceptualized, especially those dealing in normative contexts, calls for a dialectical form of sciencing, comparing, and contrasting. However, coming to know nursing is a dialogical process--direct engagement with the "word of nursing." Nursing science must be contextual; the decontextualized methodology of formal science, while essential for certain disciplines, cannot reveal direct knowledge of nursing. Because of the nature of nursing, nursing science must permit intentionality, intimacy, mutuality, and particularity.