Abstract. – The article challenges the scientific character of contemporary knowledge to the problem of an appropriate understanding of the human being and culture. The discussion of research shows the possibility of a scientific line of humanistic inquiry, according not to mathematics but to the modern understanding of science as a methodical approach to reality (Descartes). This method emerges already with Plato and finds its peak in the hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer and the structuralism of Claude Lévi-Strauss. A model of knowledge as a junction of elements in a unity of structure is at its heart. The humanistic presumption of a distinct kind of exactness helps to find the identity of humanistic research independent of the empirical sciences and makes the humanistic disciplines the legitimate space for research at the university. Moreover, the possibility for humanistic exactness, contrary to mathematical and technical exactness, contributes to avoid the danger of an exclusive technical horizon concerning the most important questions of culture and human being. [Science, culture, method, hermeneutics, structuralism]