consideration of their own past merely as an addendum, since for them what is past is simply what is no longer. Natural science itself only deals with present nature. This attitude was expressed some time ago by a famous mathematician during a debate over the occupancy of a professorial chair in classical philology. He declared that this chair should be replaced by one in physical science, and his argument was the following: classical philology always deals only with what has already been; the natural sciences, on the contrary, consider not only what is presently real, but they can also predict, and can calculate in advance how the real has to be, and in that way can lay the foundations of technology. Thus, the historiography of natural science merely consists in past discoveries and theories, ones that have been overcome long ago through progress. The “history” of science is for science itself its historiography, that which the science constantly leaves behind in its progress to ever new results. The historiography of natural science does not belong to it or to its methodology. Through historiographical considerations of the sequence of earlier theories and discoveries one can at most clarify how magnificently far we have come and how backward earlier times had been, dominated by “philosophy” and “speculation” with their unbridled dreams, which have now finally been shattered by the exact and sober consideration of the “facts.” In this way historiography can establish that a philosopher, such as Aristotle, was of the opinion that heavy bodies fall faster than light ones, whereas the “facts” of modern science prove that all bodies fall equally fast. A historiographical consideration of such a kind is therefore an account of a growth in progress, whereby whatever happens to be new is interpreted as more progressive.
But above and beyond historiography, we still claim that historical reflection is possible and will even one day prove to be indispensable. Historical reflection will question the basic experience and basic conception of the Greeks, or of Aristotle in particular, about “nature,” the body, motion, place, and time. And historical reflection will recognize that the Greek and the Aristotelian basic experience of nature was of such a kind that the velocity of the fall of heavy and light bodies and their belonging to a certain place could not have been seen otherwise or determined differently than they were. A historical reflection will