c8p66-both
The result of the considerations of this chapter is of twofold significance for our further studies. On the one hand, we have seen that there is a way out of the impasse into which modern scientific theory has got itself as a result of the lack of a justifiable concept of force, and that this way is the one shown by Reid and travelled by Goethe. 'We must become as little children again, if we will be philosophers', is as true for science as it is for philosophy. On the other hand, our investigation of the event which led Galileo to the discovery that nature is recorded in the language of mathematics, has shown us that this discovery would not have been possible unless Galileo had in a sense become, albeit unconsciously, a little child again. Thus the event that gave science its first foundations is an occurrence in man himself of precisely the same character as the one which we have learnt to regard as necessary for building science's new foundations. The only difference is that we are trying to turn into a deliberate and consciously handled method something which once in the past happened to a man without his noticing it.