104

II. Echo [149-151]

11. Every science is rigorous, but not every science is an "exact science."
The concept of "exact" is ambiguous. Generally the word means: exact, measured, careful. In this sense every science is required to be "exact," namely in view of carefulness in using the method, by following the rigor that lies in the essence of science. But if exact means the same as determined, measured. and calculated according to numbers, then exactness is the character of a method itself (even already of the projected structure [Vorbau]), not merely how that method is used.

12. If "exactness" means the measuring and calculating procedure itself, then the sentence is valid: A science can be exact only because it must be rigorous.

13. But a science must be exact (in order to remain rigorous, i.e., science) if the field of its subject-matter is launched in advance as the realm that is accessible only to quantitative measuring and calculation, only thus guaranteeing results (the modern concept of "nature").

14. The "human sciences" by contrast must remain inexact in order to be rigorous. That is not a lack, but an advantage of these sciences. Moreover, execution of rigor in the human sciences in terms of performance always remains much more difficult than carrying out the exactness of exact sciences.

15. As positive and individual in its rigor, every science is dependent
upon cognizance of its field of subject-matter, dependent upon inquiry into the same, dependent upon ἐμπειρία and experimentum in the broadest sense. Even mathematics needs experientia, the simple cognizance of its simplest objects and their determinations in axioms.

16. Every science is investigative inquiry, but not every science can be "experimental" in the sense of the modern concept of experiment.

17. Measuring (exact) science, by contrast, must be experimental. "Experiment" is a necessary, essential consequence of exactness; and a science is in no way exact simply because it experiments (regarding experiri, experimentum, and "experiment." as ordering of experimentation in the modern sense, cf. Echo, 77).

18. The modern counter-form to experimental "science" is [the discipline of] "history," that draws from "sources," and its derivative mode, "prehistory," on the basis of which what is ownmost to every history can perhaps be most sharply clarified, namely that it never reaches history [Geschichte].

All of history [as discipline] is nurtured by comparison and serves the expansion of the possibilities of comparison. Although comparison has apparently focused on differences, yet differences for history [as a discipline] never become a decisive differentness and