between two facts immediately requires a critique of the two corresponding concepts and the establishment of a new relation between them. The conditional reflex is a discovery of a new fact by means of an old concept. We learned that mental salivation develops directly from the reflex, more correctly, that it is the same reflex, but operating under other conditions. But at the same time it is a discovery of a new concept by means of an old fact: by means of the fact “salivation occurs at the sight of food,” which is well known to all of us, we acquired a completely new concept of the reflex, our idea of it diametrically changed. Whereas before, the reflex was a synonym for a pre-mental, unconscious, immutable fact, nowadays the whole mind is reduced to reflexes, the reflex has turned out to be a most flexible mechanism, etc. How would this have been possible if Pavlov had only studied the fact of salivation and not the concept of the reflex? This is essentially the same thing expressed in two ways, for in each scientific discovery knowledge of the fact is to the same extent knowledge of the concept. The scientific investigation of facts differs from registration in that it is the accumulation of concepts, the circulation of concepts and facts with a conceptual return.

Finally, the special sciences create all the concepts that the general science studies. For the natural sciences do not spring from logic, it is not logic that provides them with ready-made concepts. Can we really assume that the creation of ever more abstract concepts proceeds completely unconsciously? How can theories, laws, conflicting hypotheses exist without the critique of concepts? How can we create a theory or advance a hypothesis, i.e., something which transcends the boundaries of the facts, without working on the concepts?

But perhaps the study of concepts in the special sciences proceeds in passing, accidentally as the facts are being studied, whereas the general science studies only concepts? This would not be correct either. We have seen that the abstract concepts with which the general science operates possess a kernel of reality. The question arises what science does with this kernel—is it ignored, forgotten, covered in the inaccessible stronghold of abstractions like pure mathematics? Does one never in the process of investigation, nor after it, turn to this kernel, as if it did not exist at all? One only has to examine the method of investigation in the general science and its ultimate result to see that this is not true. Are concepts really studied by pure deduction, by finding logical relations between concepts, and not by new induction, by new analysis, the establishing of new relations, in a word—by work on the real contents of these concepts? After all, we do not develop our ideas from specific premises, as in mathematics, but we proceed by induction—we generalize enormous groups of facts, compare them, analyze and create new abstractions. This is the way general biology and general physics proceed. And not a single general science can proceed otherwise, since the logical formula “A is B” has been replaced by a definition, i.e., by the real A and B: by mass, movement, body, and organism. And the result of an investigation in a general science is not new forms of interrelations of concepts, as in logic, but new facts: we learn of evolution, heredity, inertia. How do we learn of this, how do we reach the concept of evolution? We compare such facts as the data of comparative anatomy and physiology, botany and zoology, embryology and photo- and zootechnics etc., i.e., we proceed as we proceed with the individual facts in a special science. And on the basis of a new study of the facts elaborated by the various sciences we establish new facts, i.e., in the process of investigation and in its result we are constantly operating with facts.

Thus, the difference between the general and the special science as concerns their goal, orientation, and the elaboration of concepts and facts, again appears to be only quantitative. It is a difference of degree of one and the same phenomenon and not of the nature of two sciences. It is not absolute or fundamental.