Ausdruck (expression)
Bedeutung/Bedeutsamkeit/Sinn (meaning/significance/sense)
Einfüling (empathy)
Erklärung (explanation)
Erlebnis (lived experience)
Geist (mind)
Geisteswissenshaften (humanistic disciplines)
Hermeneutik (interpretation)
Historie (history)
Kulturwissenschaften (cultural studies)
Leben (life)
Metaphysische Bewusstsein (metaphysics)
Nachbild (simulation, virtual image)
Nacherleben (re-experiencing)
Sichhineinversetzen (self into
Strukture, Strukturzusammenhang (structure, system)
Sichhineinversetzen (transposition)
Typische Sehen (type)
Ursache (cause, reason)
Verhaltung, Verhaltungsweise (attitude)
Verstehen (understanding)
Weltanschauung (worldview)
Wirkung (effect)
Wissenschaft (discipline, study)
Ausdruck
EXPRESSION
(a) The first comprises all expressions which convey ideas, i.e., language
in its logical aspect, mathematical symbolism, con¬ventional signs such
as traffic lights or railway signals, and anything else that serves the same
purpose. The arbitrary sign in these cases conveys an idea, though when the
idea is about a physical fact we sometimes speak of the sign as being a sign
of that fact, as e.g., when a bell rings in a railway station to signify the
approach of a train. With all expression of this first type our aim is clarity
and adequacy, the evil which we try to avoid is ambiguity ; and where the system
of signs is well worked out and skilfully wielded this aim is largely attained.
If someone writes down an algebraic formula, I know exactly what he means.
On the other hand, I learn very little else about him. I know what he is thinking,
but not what makes him think it, or why he says it, or how he feels, or what
sort of a man he is.
(b) The second type of expression comprises human actions. An action is not
performed in order to express the agent's pur¬pose, but in order to fulfil
it. Nevertheless, to an outside observer, it does express his purpose, i.e.,
it makes his purpose known. This is clear in simple instances, where there
is little or no doubt what purpose an action is meant to fulfil. If I see someone
sawing at the roots of a tree, there is little doubt what he intends. Of course
the question becomes harder when we come to ulterior aims, and very hard indeed
when we come to consider a long course of action stretching over a series of
years, e.g., the career of a statesman. This involves .great possibility of
misinterpretation, though offering deeper insight into his character if we
succeed in understanding. And however much we may learn about what he purposed.
and did in the circum¬stances which confronted him, we can never know what
other possibilities there may have been in him, such as only a different environment
could have called out.
(c) The third type of expression is what Dilthey calls the life expression
(Erlebnisausdruck), i.e., the spontaneous utterance or exclamation, the clapping
of hands, the laugh or the sigh; facial expression, gesture, and attitude,
and in fine all those modes of expression which give utterance primarily to
emotional states. This is a type of expression not established by convention
but connatural to man. It arises involuntarily out of lived experience. It
can sometimes go deep, and make possible a really delicate and intimate understanding.
It can express things which the subject himself does not know about himself.
Yet at best what it reveals is more easily felt than defined, it is sometimes
ambiguous, and can be and constantly is suppressed or counter¬ed. (Hodges,
21-23)
Bedeutung / Bedeutsamkeit / Sinn
MEANING / SIGNIFICANCE / SENSE
The "teleological" or vital unity maintained by the structural relations and processes in the life of an individual mind or of a group. Every episode of history, from a small one such as a visit to a cinema to a huge one such. as the French Revolution, has a "meaning" in this sense, and this is the prime object of historical study and exposition. The pattern of the whole is its sense, the part played in it by each several factor is the significance of that factor ; meaning is a general term covering both sense and significance. This is the primary usage of all these three words in Dilthey. (b) The relation between a sign or expression and what it signifies or expresses. (Hodges, 159)
Einfüling
Erklärung
Accounting for observed facts in terms of factors whose number and nature is determined not by descriptive analysis of the observed facts, but by the requirements of a methodological assumption. E.g.; accounting for physical processes in terms of entities not observable and possessing only primary qualities; or accounting for memory in terms of physical traces or "engrams" in the brain. According to Dilthey, this mode of procedure is fundamental in the natural sciences, because the real causal factors at work in nature do not fall under sense perception. But in the human studies the mental facts and their relations and interactions are consciously lived through and perceived just as they are (though not of course in their full extent), and there is no need to seek explanation by going behind them to types of entity and process other than we perceive. The human studies are descriptive as against explanatory disciplines. (Hodges, 159)
Erlebnis
Inner states, processes, and activities in so far as we consciously have them, or " live through " (erleben) or " are aware of " (innewerden) them, or " enjoy " them in Alexander's phrase, but do not make them objects to ourselves by introspection. This is the normal condition of the mental attitudes, when attention is concentrated on the objective content to which we take the attitude and not on the attitude itself. When attention is turned inwards, lived experience is objectified and becomes inner perception. (Hodges, 158)
The real unit of mental life is not a sensation or feeling, or even an isolated " intentional act " with its " content ", but a total reaction of the whole self to a situation confronting it. Every such reaction (called by Dilthey an Erlebnis) includes elements of three main types, viz., cognitive, affective, and conative, and these follow and depend on one another in a definite older which constitutes the ground rhythm of mental life: Cognition comes first, then feeling, then conation. I receive news of a friend's death : I am sorry and perhaps surprised : I am moved to do various things which the situation requires, such as writing letters of condolence or attending the funeral :. and when I have done these my reaction to the situation is complete. Or I am asked to do something which only I can do; which is important, but which will cause me inconvenience : I think it over from various points of view: I am involved in a conflict of feelings a sense of obligation emerges : I yield to this and do what is asked of me : so again the reaction is complete. A total reaction like this may be complete in, a moment, as when I sit on a nail, feel discomfort, and move to another seat. Or it may last for hours, days, or even years, if it consists in the working out of a long term plan or undertaking. In the latter case it will be a complex reaction, composed of many smaller reactions, one boxed within another, but each deriving its significance and its raison d7tre from the sense of the whole. (Hodges, 43)
Geist:
Not contrasted by Dilthey with Seele or Psyche, as in some modern writers who make Seele or Psyche mean the sensuous affective appetitive level of mental life and Geist the rational level. In Dilthey Geist is a comprehensive term covering all levels. Psychisch, seelisch, geistig are not clearly distinguished. Dilthey is more interested in the interpenetration of the levels than in the distinctions between them. (Hodges, 157-158)
Dilthey describes history and the kindred enquiries as a study of " objective
mind ", or of the " objectifications of mind ". This phrase
has a familiar ring. It occurs in Hegel, who uses it as a name for the second
division of his Philosophy of Mind. " Objective mind " in Hegel covers
ail the principles and relationships composing the moral and social life of
man : economic, legal, ethical, domestic, civil, political activities are grouped
together under this heading. It is contrasted with " subjective mind ",
which includes all processes and activities within the individual consciousness,
or what .a modern writer would sum up as " psychology ", and with " absolute
mind ", which includes those activities through which man becomes conscious
of his kinship with the universe, viz., art, religion and philosophy. This
division is artificial. It results from Hegel's metaphysic of self consciousness,
and not from empirical study, though of course a great deal of what he says
in detail is the fruit of such study and is of permanent value. Dilthey himself,
while paying tribute to Hegel's knowledge and insight on various points of
detail, takes care to dissociate his own use of the term " objective mind " from
Hegel's.
What Dilthey means by it is that body of expressions of mental life which are
not momentary and transient, but in various ways permanent and enduring, and
which constitute a most important factor in our environment. Buildings, roads
and railways,.canals and reservoirs, ploughed fields and parks, works of art,
books of all kinds, systems of ideas, habits and customs, social and cultural
institutions all these are the manifestations of a human activity which has
moulded the world into which we are born, and largely determines our own activity
within it. Through them the past acts upon the present and society upon the
individual. In them is stored up the deposit of civilization which we receive,
hand on, and increase. They are the tangible achievements in which the mind
of man has shown its presence in nature and its creative powers, and only through
them is that mind accessible to historical study. (Hodges, 30-31)
Geisteswissenshaften
" The whole group of studies which have as their object the reality of history and society " (G.S., I, 4). Known in French as les sciences morales, in J. S. Mill the moral sciences. But " science " is too narrow in English for Wissenschaft. " Moral ", " mental ", " spiritual ", and " humane " are all unsatisfactory renderings of the other half of the German word. I have called them the human studies at the suggestion of Professor A. W. . P. Wolters, of Reading. The "cultural studies " (Kulturwissenschaften) of Rickert and his followers are a narrower group, not including any generalizing and explanatory sciences such as psychology and economics. (Hodges, 157)
= a genuine intellectual discipline (Hodges, viii)
Historie
The purpose of historical study, according to Dilthey, is to come to know
scientifically and methodically what in art we understand imaginatively, the
nature of the human mind. This can never be done completely, and can only be
done at all by virtue of the manifestations in which the mind has objectified
itself. These manifestations are not purely spontaneous, they are called forth
by circumstances, and .of course if the circumstances had been different the
manifestations would have been so too. Human nature is a reservoir of infinite
possibilities, but only those are realized which find occasion for realization,
and not all even of these ; since in any situation there are a number of possibilities
open to us, of which we can only choose one. The historian explores the record
of choices actually made, and tries to fill out the picture by sketching in
those possibilities which were open but were rejected. " The point at
issue is to seek out the mind itself, how it is always, under the conditions
of a present and a space, tied to definite. possibilities." $ Such exploration
is interesting in itself, and also valuable in its effect upon the historian
; for the understanding of how others have reacted to situations unlike his
own reveals to him possibilities in his own nature of which his own circumstances
had never made him aware. Dilthey instances the effect of his own study of
Luther and the Reformation in enabling him at least to understand a religious
experience of a depth and intensity such as in his own person he was not capable
of sharing. " Man, bound and determined by the reality of life, is set
free not only through artas has often been set forth but also through the understanding
of history." 3
This widening of consciousness through historical knowledge has disconcerting
results. Every age expresses its attitude to life and the world in certain
principles of thought and conduct, which are regarded in that age as absolute
and unconditionally valid, as constituting a " law of nature " which
only frivolity or ill will can question. The historian discovers these principles
in every age which he studies, but he also discovers that they vary from age
to age, and that, in spite of the claim to absoluteness which is always made,
changed circumstances always result' in
changed principles, which are therefore historically relative. The historian
who discovers this has of course principles of his own, and these will appear
in the manner in which he writes history. He may, slip into treating these
as absolute, but his own discoveries about other people forbid us to follow
him in this. History, having revealed the relativity of all ideas .and practices,
ends by pointing to its own relativity, and leaves us in the position known
as historicism, or historical relativism. (Hodges, 32-33)
Hermeneutik
The art and science of interpreting (a) written records (b) all fixed and enduring expressions of mind. (Hodges, 160)
Interpretation, it seems, must necessarily be a circular process, because
every part of a literary work requires the whole e to make it intelligible,
while the whole in turn can only be understood in terms of the parts. Every
part of a literary work has an indeterminate meaning. Every word, unless it
be a technical term belonging to one of the trades or sciences, has a considerable
variety of possible meanings, and in itself means all and therefore none of
these. A dictionary will tell us what the range of possibilities is, but within
that range the word moves freely. It is, in Dilthey's phrase, " indeterminately
determinate ".1 What meaning it has on any particular occasion can only
be settled in terms of its context, since a word which in itself might mean
three or four things will probably be capable of not more than one meaning
in a particular context. What is true of words is true of sentences, paragraphs,
chapters, all the structural components of a book. The precise interpretation
of each of these depends on the logical structure of the whole, and the purpose
which it meant to serve, whether scientific, oratorical, eristic, or what not.
On the other hand, it is evident that the whole consists of its parts and can
be understood only by reading them through successively and building them up
into a coherent picture. Here is a logical circle, and the same circle meets
us when we try to understand the work in the light of influences brought to
bear on the author. We can understand his thoughts only by reference to she
situation which called them forth ; and yet we can understand what situation
was in his mind only if we already know what he thought.
This circle is logically unbreakable, but we break it in practice every time
we understand. We glance roughly over the parts and get from them a first impression
of the whole. Then we use this impression of the whole to throw light upon
any points which may have been obscure. We go to and fro in this way between
part and whole until we have an interpretation which is coherent in itself,
does violence to none of the parts, and fits into the historical circumstances
as known to us. When we have this, we think we understand. We apprehend the
structure or " inner form " of the work, the sense of the whole and
the significance of each part.
The process need not stop here. The meaning of one book may appear more fully
in the light of its author's other works, and this in turn in the light of
his life and character. From these we may be led on to consider his circumstances
and the age in which he lived, and to see his writings as incidents in a process
of cultural or social history which goes far beyond him and is part of the
great story of mankind. Thus the interpretation of a book can widen out until
it melts into historical study. At the same time, as has been said, understanding
is not separable from appreciation and judgment, so that interpretation passes
over insensibly into criticism, and this into the laying down of general principles
for criticism, i.e., into aesthetics.
The process of interpretation has been presented so far as a logical process,
and such in a measure` it is. But interpretation rests on understanding, which
rests on a projection of the self into the other, and this is not an intellectual
but an imaginative act. There is something in it which cannot be reduced to
rule, and which Dilthey, following Schleiermacher, calls an element of " divination ".
It cannot be taught like a technique, but only caught by infection from interpreters
of genius. To the purely logical mind, it is a mystery and an offence, and
such a mind can point out that its insights are often incapable of proof. In
any case the array of arguments adduced in support of them is not the real
basis of the conviction which we feel. But if interpretation lacks the dry
cogency of logical demonstration, it also escapes its limitations. A good interpreter
can go to the heart of a work of art and see things there of which the artist
himself was not conscious, things which were in his mind, but which are made
manifest only by the expression he gave them, and even so not manifest to himself.
Dilthey is fond of quoting Schleiermacher's phrase, that interpretation often
succeeds in understanding an author better than he understood himself.
Art expresses an understanding of life which is vivid, spontaneous, more characterized
by imaginative vigour than by intellectual acumen (Hodges, 27-29)
Kultur
A cultural system is a group of activities in which men unite on the basis of a specific common interest and purpose. Such common interests and purposes vary greatly, and Dilthey stretches the meaning of the word " culture " to make it cover them all. The chief among them are economic activity, law, morality, art, science, philosophy, religion, language, education. All these are spheres in which an abiding human interest. finds satisfaction, and a form of co operation grows up which outlasts the generations and constitutes a social force. We are born into the midst of these cultural systems, and the greater part of our activity falls within one or other of them ; sometimes within several at once, for they overlap, and a single action may be the meeting place of two or three of them.
When a scholar writes a book, this process may be a link in the concatenation of truths which constitutes science ; at the same time it is the most important link in the economic process which culminates in the publication and sale of copies of the work ; it has also a legal side, as the fulfilment of a contract, and it may be an element in the professional functions of the scholar as laid down by the administrative system. The writing down of each and every letter of this work is thus an element in all these systems.'
Each cultural system has some who devote their lives to it, whether through liking or to earn a living, or both, and these are its professionals or specialists. Among them will be found a few who have talent or creative genius, and it is these who are responsible for new departures and discoveries, which the rest of the specialist body take over and popularize. On the outskirts are gathered the multitude of adherents who create nothing, but in varying degrees contribute to keep up the activity and profit by its results. For the benefit of those engaged in a cultural system, organizations come into being, sometimes fluid and transient, like a chess club or a dramatic society which may , be quite short lived, and sometimes permanent over thousands of years, like the Christian Church. These organizations combine with the lasting products of the various cultural systems, such as houses, parks, roads, books, statues, theories, to act as repositories of tradition, so binding the generations together and giving to each cultural system " an outward permanence independent of the actual individuals, and a character of massive objectivity ".a One of these cultural systems is morality, or " the moral system ", which consists in the shaping of impulse and character in individuals by the gradually accumulating experience of man¬kind, mediated through various kinds of tradition and .social pressure. (Hodges, 56-57)
The bond of unity in a cultural system is a common interest in one aspect
of human life. Therefore the divisions between cultural systems cut across
those between peoples and States. Many cultural systems function side by side
in one State, and all reach out across its boundaries. In contrast with these
stand those associations whose bond of unity is common descent and/or territorial
contiguity. These are the " outward organizations of society ", and
they hold men together not for the fulfilment of one function, but for the
fulfilment or at least the protection of all functions, for the living of life
as a whole. The oldest of them is the family, in which economic, educational,
moral and juridical, and religious functions are fulfilled without serious
attempt to distinguish them. From this develop the clan and the tribe, and
then the State, whose unity depends on many common interests, of which racial
homogeneity need not be one. The State is an organ of power, which it uses
to control and protect all smaller groups and organizations within its territory.
But // physical power is not the only motive on which the loyalty of its subjects
is based. There are also social relationships of authority and leadership,
and a strong tense of community based on common material interests, common
cultural traditions, common memories and aspirations. The functions of the
State are heterogeneous, and vary notably from place to place. Thus it may
take into its hands the control of education, which is a cultural system, or
it may let go a control which it previously had over economic or religious
life. Such changes occur from time to time as circumstances require,, and their
result is that no precise definition of the functions of the State can be given.
Dilthey finds that law holds an ambiguous position between the outward organizations.
and the cultural systems. (Hodges, 5859)
Leben
In Dilthey not a biological, but a psychological and quasi¬metaphysical term, referring to all mental states, processes, and activities, conscious or unconscious, and especially those creative and expressive activities which are the substance of history and the object of the human studies. (Hodges, 157)
Metaphysische Bewusstein
Metaphysics (the metaphysical consciousness)
Awa: eness of the riddle of life and of the vast speculative ques¬tions which it opens up, and which go beyond all possibility of an answer through empirical investigation. This awareness plays an important part in producing the highest achievements of religion, art, and philosophy. The attempt to answer its questions by severe reasoning in a universally convincing way gives rise to the pseudo science of metaphysics. (Hodges, 160)
Philosophy has tradi¬tionally recognized in certain first principles of absolute generality the foundations on which all knowledge and belief are based. To take these principles for granted as true and to work them up into a coherent picture of the skeleton structure of reality is to be a metaphysician. To enquire into the grounds on which our acceptance of the principles can be justified is to be a "critical " philosopher in Kant's sense. What Dilthey has done is to show that the principles themselves do not form a single coherent system, that there are alternative sets of them, and that each set represents the way in which a particular type of mind views the world, a way which depends as much on affective and volitional factors as on intellectual considerations. (Hodges, ix)
Nachbild
[Facsimile, replica, imitation {simulation}] analog
Nacherleben
Re experiencing in my own consciousness an incident which really belongs to someone else's mental history. This is the process which makes possible the understanding of other persons. The conscious processes in my own mind by means of which I do it are the Nachbild of the reality which I thus understand. (Hodges, 160)
“This power of expressions to evoke what they express is the basis of
all communication and all sharing of experience between human beings. It is
not an inferential process. When I see the stricken figure I do not begin by
recognizing the attitude as the attitude typical of grief, and conclude from
this that the person before me is experiencing grief. The mere sight of the
expression awakens in me an immediate response, not intellectual, but emotional,
feeling arouses feeling with no other intermediary than the expression itself.
Dilthey remarks that what happens in me on such an occasion is the same as
what happens in the rather person whom I understand, only as it were in reverse.
In him a lived experience has externalized itself in an expression. in me,
a perceived expression has internalized itself in the shape of a Nachbild of
the experience expressed. Guided by the other person 's expression, I live
over 'again (nacherlebe) his experience in my own consciousness, and this is
the essence of understanding. “To reproduce is to re live " (Nachbilden
ist eben ein Nacherleben).1
When I thus re live someone's experience, the Nachbild of his experience in
my mind both is and is not a part of my own mental history. It is, in the sense
that it is I who am conscious of it, it belongs to my unity of apperception.
It is not, in the sense that it is not my personal response to circumstances
affecting me personally, but a reflection in me of someone else's response
to circumstances affecting him. It is, so to say, distanced from the stream
of my own life, eingeklammert or bracketed off', and ascribed by me to the
other person. This again is not an act of deliberate judgment. I do not begin
by observing the presence of a feeling in my mind and then judge that it is
a reflection of something in his, but it is immediately projected and perceived
by me as his. This projection Dilthey calls a " transpositiori of myself " (Uebertragung,
Transposition, Sichhineinversetzen). It means perceiving the other person as
possessed of an inner life essentially like my own, and so " rediscovering
myself in the Thou " (das Verstehen ist ein Wiederfinden des Ich im Du).” (Hodges,
14-15)
Sichhineinversetzen
Strukture, Strukturzusammenhang
The pattern of relations and interactions subsisting between the three types of conscious attitude. (a) The typical differences between the three kinds of attitude and the subordinate divisions under each head (e.g., under cognition the distinctions between sensation, imagination, perception, thought, etc.). (b) The functional relations between the subordinate elements under each head (e.g., the way in which sensation is amplified and interpreted by other activities so that it becomes perception, and this is distilled into abstract thought, and thought and perception work together to build up a widening realm of knowledge). (c) The functional relations between the three main types of attitude. Cognitive experience gives rise to affective and conative reactions, and all together constitute mental life. In any moment of mental life, taken in its concrete actuality, elements of all three kinds will be found, though one kind or other will be dominant. All these "structural " relations and processes are "teleological " in the sense that they work to build up and maintain a vital whole. Casual connections such as arise under the laws of association are not "structural ". (Hodges, 158-159)
“Only from the depths of lived experience can the strong expressions for these things be drawn—it is not from inferences that our knowledge of causation, which make the true system of life accessible to us, has arisen. Thus we have a fragmentary experience of certain connections, which are then combined into the structural system in memory and in reflection upon it. In a single sweep of memory we run through the connected sequence of an earlier life.” (G.S., VII, 328-9 in Hodges, 117)
What constitutes "understanding " here is not primarily the relation between an expression and what it ex¬presses; but the relation between part and whole in a living process (Hodges, 20)
Every unit reaction contains cognition, feeling, and conation, and none of these is possible without the rest. I cannot cognize a thing without being interested in it and having feelings and/or desires about it. I cannot feel unless I have an idea of the object, and feeling tends to pass over into action. I cannot act unless I know the situation and my own aim, and action is usually motivated and always accompanied by feeling. These relations between the three elements in experience. are called by Dilthey the " structure " or " structural system " (Struktur, Strukturzusammenhang) of the mind, and the possibility of a descriptive psychology rests on the fact that this structural system is not discovered by inference or hypothesis, but is actually experienced, or " given in lived experience " (im Erlebnis gegeben). (Hodges, 43-44) [see accompanying example of lived experience]
See metaphysics above
This is not an act of deliberate judgment. I do not begin by observing the presence of a feeling in my mind and then judge that it is a reflection of something in his, but it is immediately projected and perceived by me as his. This projection Dilthey calls a "transposition of myself " (Uebertragung, Transposition, Sichhineinversetzen). It means perceiving the other person as possessed of an inner life essentially like my own, and so " rediscovering myself in the Thou
Typische Sehen (typical seeing, sight, vision)
All life is a complex of functions, and those qualities in the living thing which make for adequate fulfilment of function are singled out by us as the " essential" or " typical " qualities, and become for us both a descriptive norm and a standard of value. Am individual being or action which strikingly exhibits these essential qualities is recognized as a "type", and becomes a standard of reference by which other individuals are judged
Ursache
Verhaltung, Verhaltungsweise
The relation between the conscious subject as such and the content or object of which he is conscious. According to Dilthey this relation must belong to one of three types, viz., cognitive, affective, or conative, which coexist and influence one another but are irreducible to one another. (There are also conscious states in which there is no attitude involved, because there is no distinction between subject and content or object ; e.g., elementary sensations and emotions which are not made objects of attention and given an objective reference.) (Hodges, 158)
Verstehen
Apprehending the meaning, in sense (a) above, of a portion of mental life or history, i.e., seeing all its parts and aspects in relation to the vital movement of the whole. This is the primary meaning of the word in Dilthey. (b) Apprehending the meaning, in sense (b) above, of a sign or expression, i.e., understanding (in the foregoing sense) the mental fact or process which it signifies or expresses. Understanding is always of the individual or the type, not of a general law or principle ; and always of something mental, never of anything merely physical. (Hodges, 160)
of the process of understanding (das Verstehen) whereby we come to know our own mental life and that of others. This is a side of epistemology which has been steadily neglected since the very earliest times (Hodges, viii)
Weltanschauung
There is no adequate English equivalent, and I have often used the German word. In Dilthey it means a complex of ideas and sentiments comprising (a) beliefs and convictions about the nature of life and the world, (b) emotional habits and tendencies based on these, and (c) a system of purposes, preferences, and principles governing action and giving life unity and meaning The Weltanschauung of a person or a society includes that person's or society's answer to the fundamental questions of destiny which Dilthey calls the riddle of life. (Hodges, 160)
Wirkung
Wissenschaft
" By a science is commonly understood a complex of proposi¬tions whose elements are concepts, i.e., are completely determinate, constant and universally valid throughout the chain of thought, whose connections are well grounded, and in which the parts are combined with the aim of contributing to a whole, because this combination of propositions enables us either to think an element of reality in its completeness, or to give rules to a branch of human activity " (G. S., I, 4 5). In short, any organized body of thought, whether mathematics, natural science, history, sociology, law, philosophy, or theology. Because " science " in English has not this broad meaning, I have often rendered Wissenschaft by study or discipline. (Hodges, 157)
logic, the latter term being taken to cover the methodology of the sciences
(Hodges, viii)
Wissenschaft in German has the proper sense of any methodical pursuit of knowledge.
(Hodges, viii)
last revised: Tuesday, July 27, 2004 9:11 AM