DE METHODE DER GEESTESWETENSCHAPPEN

Abstract

SUMMARY As far as content is concerned the scientific achievements of the Atlantic nations have been outstanding in every field. When we come to judge the methodology, however, they are found to be less satisfactory. It is still a subject of heated argument whether the psychological, historical and social sciences should follow the same methods as the physical sciences or adopt a specific method of their own. In proposing this question a twofold error has been made. In the first place there is no question of excluding the scientific method from the “Geisteswissenschaft”. In order that its objects 386 DE METHODE DER GEESTESWETENSCHAPPEN should be properly understood it must examine both their natural behaviour and their essential characteristics. In the second place neither the physical scientific method nor the method of the “Geisteswissenschaft” can be defined univocally. Both have their own intrinsic dialectical progressions and have a natural relation to one another. This is expressed in the principle of the pseudo~ Dionysius that the lowest degree of the higher scale is contiguous to or coincides with the highest degree of the lower. Hence it follows that the science of the highest object viz. human mind and society, in order to acquire a full and integral understanding of its object, must apply its own method and those of all the lower sciences. In this article the formal categories and methods of both the natural sciences and “Geisteswissenschaft” are briefly investigated. The conclusion reached is that the natural sciences must take into account mechanism, cen~ trality or centralization, structure, chemism or neutralization and teleology. Further the tendency inherent in every science to gain knowledge of its object by means of the lower categories is explained. The natural sciences attempt to deny finality, to explain chemical changes as structures, to reduce structures to laws or to degrade them to mechanism. The “Geisteswissenschaft” knows its object by investigating its life, in~ stinct, rationality and spirit. Here also we find the same tendency to reduce spirit to mere rationality, rationality to social instinct, to regard instinct simply as a mode of life and to associate life with still lower forms of being and thinking. The fact that so many people still try to approach the study of the mind (spirit) using the natural scientific method, is due to this point of view. We will not achieve succes in the “Geisteswissenschaft” unless we break completely with all these tendencies and learn to understand that the spirit (mind) includes in itself all lower forms of being and acting, but in itself as a spirit with its own being and acting and according to its own manner.