We have seen that the explanatory principle carries us beyond the boundaries of a given science and must interpret the whole unified area of knowledge as a special category or stage of being amidst a number of other categories, i.e., at stake are highly generalized, ultimate, essentially philosophical principles. In this sense the general science is the philosophy of the special disciplines.

In this sense Binswanger [1922, p. 3] says that a general science such as, for example, general biology elaborates the foundations and problems of a whole area of being. Interestingly, the first book that lay the foundation of general biology was called “The philosophy of zoology” (Lamarck11). The further a general investigation penetrates, continues Binswanger, the larger the area it covers, the more abstract and more remote from directly perceived reality the subject matter of such an investigation will become. Instead of living plants, animals, persons, the subject matter of science becomes the manifestations of life and, finally, life itself, just as in physics force and matter replaced bodies and theft changes. Sooner or later for each science the moment comes when it must accept itself as a whole, reflect upon its methods and shift the attention from the facts and phenomena to the concepts it utilizes. But from this moment on the general science is distinct from the special one not because it is broader in scope, but because it is organized in a qualitatively different way. No longer does it study the same objects as the special science; rather, it investigates the concepts of this science. It becomes a critical study in the sense Kant used this expression. No longer being a biological or physical investigation, the critical investigation is concerned with the concepts of biology or physics. Consequently, general psychology is defined by Binswanger as a critical reflection upon the basic concepts of psychology, in short, as “a critique of psychology.” It is a branch of general methodology, i.e., of the part of logic that studies the different applications of logical forms and norms in the various sciences in accordance with the formal and material reality of the nature of theft objects, theft procedures, and theft problems. [6]

This argumentation, based on formal logical premises, is only half true. It is correct that the general science is a theory of ultimate foundations, of the general principles and problems of a given area of knowledge, and that consequently its subject matter, methods of investigation, criteria and tasks are different from those in the special disciplines. But it is incorrect to view it as merely a part of logic, as merely a logical discipline, as if general biology is no longer a biological discipline but a logical one, as if general psychology stops being psychology but becomes logic. It is incorrect to! view it as merely critique in the Kantian sense, to assume that it only studies concepts. It is first of all incorrect historically, but also according to the essence of the matter and the inner nature of scientific knowledge.

It is incorrect historically, i.e., it does not correspond with the actual state of affairs in any science. There does not exist a single general science in the form described by Binswanger. Not even general biology in the form in which it actually exists, the biology whose foundations were laid by the works of Lamarck and Darwin, the biology which is until now the canon of genuine knowledge of living matter, is, of course, part of logic, but a natural science, albeit of the highest level. Of course, it does not deal with living, concrete objects such as plants and animals, but with abstractions such as organism, evolution of species, natural selection and life, but in the final analysis it nevertheless studies by means of these abstractions the same reality as zoology and botany. It would be as much a mistake to say that it studjes concepts and not the reality reflected in these concepts, as it would to