ABSTRACT
The “discursive” nature of thinking proves itself in that it does not content itself simply to accept and to assume the series of the given but in that it seeks to actually “run through” this series. And it can run through it only by seeking at the same time a rule of transition that will lead from one link to another. This rule, which is solely postulated and sought, remains the characteristic by which the distinctive “facticity” of natural-scientific thinking differs from every other form of mere factual cognition. The historical development of the modern form of the theory of the periodic system throws clear light on how the transition from “individual constants” to “universal constants” constitutes one of the most important and fruitful motives in the whole process of natural-scientific cognition. “Nature” is given to the human being only once the human has learned to execute a cut between nature and its own world of “subjective” feeling.
