Abstract

A new scientific mentality of the late eighteenth century, dissatisfied with mechanistic and mathematical models of reasoning and demonstration, replaced static concepts with dynamic ones and defined reality in terms of complex interconnections. These thinkers believed there were basic regulative patterns common to all living entities which could be grasped only by analogical reasoning and comparison. But they also believed that the specific content, such as laws, languages, and nations, existed within a specific historic context. Historical understanding was seen as combining a sense for the formal pattern of development with an acute awareness of the specific force field of historical and environmental determinants existing at a given moment