without any consideration given to the system’s own historical change and development. Respectively, the historical and the philosophical approaches undeniably focus on objective features of the subject matter, the object of investigation. However, since these features, viewed isolated from one another, constitute the opposites of one another, one dynamic, the other static, this may cause problems for the investigation at hand. In this investigation, the reasons for the problems indicated above are due to the genetic understanding of science that I wish to present, which is the development of ideas, the history of ideas as explained by reference to their interaction with, or application to, external facts such as, for instance, law - which is of central interest. Hence, the prime premiss is that if a specific idea of science has a specific content; it will interact with facts in a specific, content-driven manner. In science, determinations internal to the idea thus interact with external facts. Hence, a specific theory of science will develop under the pressure of external realities such as law and society, while the specific theory of science will invariably have a corresponding effect on law and society. However, from the scientist’s point of view there is the problem of finding a balance between the internal and the external elements of the scientific explanation. One difficulty is that the choice of focus (be it historical or philosophical) will affect the general outline of the investigation, running the risk that the investigation is conducted at the expense of its epistemological opposite, whereby important clues needed to solve the problems at hand, as well as clues needed to complete the research task, risk being ignored.The inconsistencies of a complete philosophical system can probably be resolved or at least explained if a historical dimension is added to the (purely) philosophical dimension of the investigation. In a philosophical investigation, the introduction of a chronology will probably reveal that, with the passage of time, apparently inconsistent and a ca l l f o r s c i e n t i f i c p u r i t y 25
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