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Classification of the Sci
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tematized knowledge, is an improvement upon a statement of Kant (Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft: 1786): "Eine jede Lehre, wenn sie ein System, dass ist, ein nach Principien geordnetes Ganzes der Erkenntnis sein soll, heisst Wissenschaft." Yet it is to be noted that knowledge may be systematic or "organized," without being organized by means of general principles. Kant's definition, however, is only a modification of the ancient view that science is the knowledge of a thing through its causes,—the comprehension of it, as we might say,—as being the only perfect knowledge of it. In short, the Coleridgian definition is nothing but the last development of that sort of philosophy that strives to draw knowledge out of the depths of the Ich-heit. If, on the other hand, one opens the works of Francis Bacon, one remarks that, with all the astounding greenness and inexperience of his views of science, in some respects