First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature

§. VI.

Internal organization of the system of speculative physics.

The investigation into the principle of speculative physics must be preceded by investigations into the difference between the speculative and the empirical in general. It depends here primarily on the conviction that there is such a complete opposition between empiricism and theory that there cannot be a third thing in which both are to be united; that, therefore, the concept of an empirical science is a hybrid concept, with which nothing coherent can be associated, or which, rather, cannot be thought at all. What is pure empiricism is not science, and conversely, what is science is not empiricism. This is not meant to disparage empiricism, but rather to present it in its true and peculiar light. Pure empiricism, whatever its object may be, is history (the absolute opposite of theory), and conversely, only history is empiricism. Those warm praisers of empiricism who elevate it at the expense of science [wrongly] treat the concept of...