Geisteswissenschaften is the German word that stands for Humanities.
The goal of this German word is to distinguish between the Humanities and Natural Science.
Usually, we are differentiating the Humanities as a branch of science that is striving to understand (Verstehen) where the natural sciences are focused on explaining (Erklärung).
In the Anglo-American discourse, the Humanities are more or less the same as what is called Social Sciences. Yet, as the context in which the Humanities are being studied is a lot different than the one in which the Social Sciences are developed, there are some specificities. For example, in Europe, the Humanities are not moduled on top of the fundamentals of the Natural Sciences, as they are in Great Britain and even more so in the United States.
