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76. Propositions about "Science" [154-155]

decision of itself, then what can be called historical thinking is enacted. The historical thinker is as essentially different from the historian as from the philosopher. Least of all should he be brought together with that illusory creation that one is accustomed to calling "philosophy of history." The focus of the historical thinkers mindfulness and presentation is always on a definite domain of creating, of decisions, of the summits and precipices within history (whether it be poetry, plastic art, or grounding and leading a state). Insofar as the present and future epoch unfolds as historical, although each in a totally different way—the present-modern epoch, insofar as it suppresses history historically [historisch] without being able to avoid it; the future epoch, insofar as it must swing into the simpleness and keenness of historical being—the lines between the figures of historian and historical thinker, seen externally, are today necessarily blurred. This is true the more [the discipline of] history, corresponding to the growing formation of its character as newspaper-science, disseminates the insidious impression of being a super-scientific observation of history—and thus brings historically mindful deliberation into total confusion. But this confusion is increased once again by the Christian apologetics of history, which has come to power and been practiced since Augustine’s civitas dei and in whose service all non-Christians have today already entered—those for whom everything depends on merely rescuing what has been up to now, i.e., on hindering essential decisions.

Genuine historical thinking will thus be recognizable by only a few. And from these few only the rare will rescue historical knowing all the way through the general hodgepodge of historical [historischen] opinion, so a future generation’s being ready for decision.

Nature is even further removed than history; and blocking history from nature is all the more complete as the knowledge of nature develops into an organic observation, without knowing that "organism" simply presents the completion of "mechanism." Thus it happens that an epoch of unrestrained technicism can at the same time find its self-interpretation in an "organic worldview."

19. With the growing consolidation of the machinational-technical essence of all sciences, the objective and methodical difference between the natural and the human sciences will recede more and more. Natural sciences will become a part of machine technology and its operations; human sciences will unfold as a comprehensive and gigantic newspaper science, in which the present "lived-experience" will continually be interpreted historically [historisch] and in which its publicness will be conveyed to everyone by this interpretation, as quickly and as accessibly as possible.