14 SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY OF THE ORGANISM 



though in a somewhat different sense, we shall call that 

 part of every branch of natural sciences which regards the 

 establishment of a law of nature as its ideal, " nomothetic," 

 i.e. " law-giving." 



But while every natural science has its nomothetic side, 

 it also has another half of a very different kind. This second 

 half of every natural science does not care for the same 

 general, the same universal, which is shown to us in every 

 event in a different and specified kind : it is diversity, it is 

 specification, that constitutes the subject of its interest. 

 Its aim is to find a sufficient reason for the types of 

 diversities, for the types of specifications. So in chemistry 

 there has been found a systematic order in the long series 

 of the compounds and of the elements ; crystallography also 

 has its different systems of crystals, and so on. 



We have already employed the word by which we shall 

 designate this second half of every natural science : it is 

 the " systematic " side of science. 



Nomothetic work on the one side and systematics on 

 the other do, in fact, appear in every natural science, and 

 besides them there are no other main parts. But " science ' 

 as a whole stands apart from another aspect of reality 

 which is called " history.'* History deals with particulars, 

 with particular events at such and such a place, whilst 

 science always abstracts from the particular, even in its 

 systematic half. 1 







1 Wiudelband (Geschichte und Naturwissenschaft, 3 Auflage. 1904) gives 

 the name "nomothetic " to the whole of our " science " and calls the method 

 of history " idiographic." We thought it better to establish three funda- 

 mental types of all possible branches of knowledge. 



