But whereof do we speak? Is not what is said a remarkable chain of empty assertions? Where is the proof? Does what has been put forward still have the slightest thing to do with science? It will be good if we persevere as long as possible in such objections [or defensive posture: Abwehrhaltung] to what is said. For only thus do we keep ourselves at the necessary distance [Abstand] for a run-up, from out of which perhaps one or another of us will succeed at the leap9 into thinking what is most considerable.
It’s true, you see: what has been said so far and the entire discussion to follow have nothing to do with science, to wit, precisely whenever the discussion is allowed to be a thinking. The ground of this state of affairs lies in the fact that science does not think. It does not think because it can never reflect on the manner of its proceeding and its tools – does not think, namely, in the manner of the thinker. That science cannot think is not a lack but rather an advantage. That alone secures for it the possibility of engaging in a certain region of objects in the manner of research and settling itself therein. Science does not think.10 That is a shocking proposition for customary representation. Let us leave to the proposition its shocking character, even when it is followed by the postscript that science, like all human activity, is referred to thinking. But the relation [Beziehung] of science to thinking is only a genuine and fruitful one if the crevasse that stands between science and thinking has become visible, namely, as unbridgeable. There is no bridge from science to thinking, but only the leap. The leap brings us not only to the other side, but to a completely other locality [or context: Ortschaft]. What is opened up with this locality does not permit of proof, if to prove means [heißt] to deduce propositions about a state of affairs from out of appropriate presuppositions through a chain of conclusions. Regarding what first becomes evident insofar as it appears of itself by at the same time concealing itself – whoever still claims to prove and to have proven such things in no way judges according to
9 Third edition, 1967: Cf. “The Principle of Identity” [GA 11]
10 [The following, quite helpful marginal note is appended to this sentence in GA 8, p. 9:
“Science does not think.”
(Cf. Vorträge und Aufsätze p. 62 {indicates a marginal note to “Science and Reflection,” GA 7:60})
no pejorative judgment; no establishment of a fact; much more a determination of essence (the “not” is no omission but “refusal”): this says: science does not have the manner of being of its region as such for a theme – its theme – cannot at all have this –
Thinking in the sense of the thinker
Thinking determined starting from its call [Geheiß: behest]; call of sustainment [Austrag]. – “Zur Sache des Denkens” sending of being and ontological difference
Science and reflection – technically and politically without measure –
“Science” – not: the individual researchers, who possibly “think,” but then not within the method of their research, as scientifically employed]